///^ 




LB 1162 


.B5 


Copy 1 







LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 






UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



EDITED BY 

WILLIAM T. HARRIS, A. M., LL. D. 



VoLmii: XXVI. 



INTERNATIONAL BDVOATION SERIES 



SYMBOLIC EDUCATION 



A COMMENTARY ON 

FROEBEL'S "MOTHER PLAY" 



BY ,/ 

SUSAN E. BLOW 



f^^ 



>Fr28l894^ 




NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1894 



i 



.55 



Copyright, 1894, 

By d. appleton and company. 



Electrotyped and Printed 
AT THE Appleton Press, U. S. A. 



TO 

THE SISTER 

WHO HAS TAUGHT ME TO UNDERSTAND A MOTHER'S LOVE 

AND BLESSED ME WITH A DAUGHTER'S CONFIDENCE 

I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 



Dasz sie die Kinder erziehen Konnten 
Muszten die Miitter seyn wie Enten: 
Sie schwliramcn rait ihrer Brut in Ruh; 
Da geliort aber freilich Wasser dazu. 

Goethe. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. 



The kindergarten constantly gains ground 
in the United States as well as in Europe. In 
1892 an inquiry sent out from the Bureau of 
Education obtained information of the existence 
of 2,000 private kindergartens and 459 public 
kindergartens. Of the former, 1,148 failed to re- 
spond to the inquiry sent them. The 852 private 
kindergartens that reported had 1,602 teachers 
and 33,637 pupils. The 459 public kindergartens 
reported 933 teachers and 31,659 pupils enrolled 
during the year. The returns showed a total of 
nearly 2,500 kindergartens, with an enrollment 
of 65,296 pupils in the 1,311 that reported. 

According to the reports from year to year 
there were in 1873, so far as could be learned, 42 
kindergartens, 73 teachers, 1,252 pupils. 

Five years later (1878) these had increased to 
159 kindergartens, 376 teachers, 4,797 pupils. 

In 1882 there were reported 348 kindergar- 
tens, 814 teachers, 16,916 pupils. 



viii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

In 1888, 521 kindergartens, 1,302 teachers, 31,- 
227 pupils. 

In 1892, as above stated, reports were received 
from 1,311 kindergartens having 2,535 teachers 
and 65,296 pupils, and the addresses of nearly as 
many more were obtained which failed to make 
reports when asked.* It may be safe to estimate 
the number of kindergartens at 3,000, the teach- 
ers at 5,000, the pupils at 100,000. 

The advent of the kindergarten in the educa- 
tional system of this country has more signifi- 
cance than the above statistics would indicate; 
for the kindergarten brings with it a new leaven, 
so to speak, that is destined to leaven the whole 
lump. It inspires its teachers with the true mis- 
sionary spirit, to devote themselves to the work 
of unfolding the self -activity of humanity in its 
feeblest and most rudimentary stage of growth. 
In proportion to the maturity of the human be- 
ing, he manifests the power of self-help. The 
teacher of advanced pupils does not stand in 
need of such refinements of method to secure 
profitable industry in his classes ; it is the teach- 
er of feeble-minded adults or of very young chil- 
dren that must have what the Germans call a 
" developing method " (entwicJcelnde Methode). 

* See Annual Report of Bureau of Education for 1890-'91, 
pp. 676-783. 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. ix 

A correct method is very important even in 
higher education ; it is indispensable in primary 
education. 

It happens, therefore, that the kindergarten 
gives great attention to the sequence of studies, 
the educational value of each exercise, and to 
the correct method of directing the pupil's own 
efforts without stunting them by officious help. 
In all these things she, the good kindergartner, 
continually follows the lead of Froebel, and ever 
finds new significance in his profound thoughts, 
expressed, as they often are by him, in the form 
of obscure hints or inadequate expositions. 

The existence in every community of a coterie 
of zealous students of Froebel, composed of teach- 
ers and mothers of young children, will tend to 
draw large numbers of the instructors of older 
children and youth into the study of the mental 
evolution of children. Then will follow an edu- 
cational era of good methods in all grades of 
schools. We shall not find then, as we do now, a 
teacher permitted to overdo one branch of study 
to such an extent as to arrest development on 
some elementary plane, and destroy aspiration 
for more perfect instruments of knowledge and 
for deeper depths of thought. 

The mechanic who has learned with great 
thoroughness a knack of the hand, is not as eager 



X EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

to learn how to manage a machine that can do 
more and better work as is the workman who 
lacks perfection in the lower form of manual 
skill. Thoroughness, carried to mechanical per- 
fection in the studies of the primary school, often 
produces this arrest of development. Over-culti- 
vation of verbal memory cripples alike the power 
of original thinking and the power of accurate 
observation. Too much practice on elementary 
arithmetic, for the purpose of securing rapid and 
accurate addition of columns of numbers, is 
known to dull the capacity to learn grammar, 
and history, and literature. 

If the methods in use in the elementary and 
secondary schools were founded on a knowl- 
edge of the evolution of the mental faculties, 
would not a far greater number of our youth 
manifest an intense desire to continue work in 
the secondary school, and from thence resort to 
the college and university ? As it is, ninety- 
four pupils out of every one hundred are study- 
ing only elementary branches. While nearly all 
the children under fourteen years of age get some 
elementary instruction, only one in seven of those 
between fourteen and eighteen get secondary in- 
struction, and only one in thirty of those between 
eighteen and twenty-two attend colleges and 
universities. Even if the secondary and higher 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. xi 

schools were not better filled than now, would 
not the enkindled aspiration in our youth pro- 
duce a people that would carry on their educa- 
tion throughout life ? 

I have already pointed out, in my preface to 
the translation of Froebel's Education of Man, 
published in this series, that the philosopher of 
education is Froebel, and not Pestalozzi, who is 
only the prophet or herald of its philosophy. 
"Inner connection" is Froebel's chief category, 
and he seeks unweariedly all his life to find inner 
connection between the steps of growth in the 
child and inner connection between the realms of 
Nature. Pursuing this line of inquiry, he comes 
finally to seek the correspondence between the 
inner connection of the unfolding faculties of 
the child and the inner connection that exists in 
Nature. And inasmuch as correspondence itself 
is inner connection, we see that Froebel's philoso- 
phy of education is an inner connection of the 
third degree : 

1. Inner connection between the objects of 
Nature : evolution. 

2. Inner connection between the faculties of 
the mind : mental development, or education. 

3. Inner connection between the subjective 
and objective, the mind and Nature : the philos- 
ophy of education. 



xii EDITOR'S PREFACE. 

The first self-revelation of the child is through 
play. He learns by it what he can do : what he 
can do easily at first trial, and what he can do by 
perseverance and contrivance. Thus he learns 
through play to recognize the potency of those 
" lords of life " (as Emerson calls them) that 
weave the tissue of human experience — volition, 
making and unmaking, obstinacy of material, the 
magic of contrivance, the lordly might of perse- 
verance that can re-enforce the moment by the 
hours (and time by eternity). The child in his 
games represents to himself his kinship to the 
human race — his identity, as little self, with the 
social whole as his greater self. 

In the nature of things the child is always 
outgrowing his playthings — always exhausting 
the possibilities of a given object to represent or 
symbolize the occupations and deeds of grown- 
up humanity in the world about him. Were the 
child to arrest his development and linger con- 
tented over a doll or a hobby-horse, the result 
would be lamentable. Hence unmahing is as 
important as making to the child. His destruc- 
tive energy is as essential to him as his power 
of construction — a point often missed by kin- 
dergartners who have not penetrated Froebel's 
doctrine of inner connection in its third degree. 

True inner development or education should 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. xiii 

proceed from the symbolic to the aesthetic or 
artistic, from art to science, and from science to 
philosophy ; for true art (including also poetry) 
is a higher form of "inner connection" than 
the merely symbolic, which constitutes the spir- 
itual side of play. Again, science and philoso- 
phy are more advanced than art in the fact that 
they seize the inner connection directly and sim- 
ply, while the symbolic form is only a suspicion 
or intimation of an inner connection, and art is 
only a personification or an illustration of it. 

Miss Blow, in the last chapter of the book 
before us, has characterized in a happy manner 
this transcendental feature in human life — de- 
scribing it as "vortical education"; as if sym- 
bolic corresponded to the line, art to the surface, 
and science to the solid, having within itself all 
the three dimensions. She has done a great 
service to the philosophy of Froebel by expound- 
ing as his chief thought the idea of Gliedganzes, 
or whole that is at the same time a member of 
a larger whole — as man is a self-determined in- 
dividual, and at the same time is a constituent 
of a social whole — as, for example, the family, 
the city corporation, the nation (see Chapters II 
and III). 

This idea of " member- whole " is undoubtedly 
the deepest and most fruitful in the philosophy 



xiv EDITOR'S PREFACE, 

of education, and it is well that its consideration 
is introduced in the first chapter of this book by 
a criticism of its opposite idea, that of atomism, 
which is preached by Rousseau and his dis- 
ciples. 

It is interesting to note here that Hegel found 
this thought in the famous seventh chapter of the 
eleventh book of Aristotle's Metaphysics, where 
he speaks of the intelligible as being the " other 
co-element" {(rva-TOLxta) of the thinking activity 
or reason (voSs). He exclaims, on quoting this 
passage, "One can scarce believe his eyes," at 
finding this thought in Aristotle ; and proceeds 
to explain the word (rva-roixLa (which is often 
translated series) as sometimes signifying "an 
element which is itself its own element, and is 
always self-determined " — that is to say, it is a 
member of itself, and thus a whole and a part at 
the same time. The reach of this thought is note- 
worthy as explaining the constitution of mind or 
consciousness (which is subject and object — co- 
elements — and at the same time a whole including 
both ; the subject and object are likewise wholes 
as well as co-elements). Here we have a Glied- 
ganzes. But what man is as personality, he is 
also in his institutions ; he is a citizen of a state ; 
the parent or the child of the family ; a member 
of any co-operative community. This, too, is ex- 



EDITOR'S PREFACE. XV 

pressed in the highest thought man has reached, 
that of the invisible Church celebrated in St. 
John's Revelation, wherein each person, inspired 
by the missionary spirit of self-sacrifice for oth- 
ers, becomes a member of an infinite choir or 
congregation, and at the same time he is an in- 
dividual self -active whole in himself. Indeed, is 
not the mystery of the Holy Trinity the supreme 
exemplar of this independence in the midst of 
perfect unity with others ? 

The Mother's Songs and Games (Mutter-Spiel 
und Koselieder) * was published fifteen years 
after The Education of Man, and gives the 
fruitage of Froebel's long thinking and experi- 
menting. 

The publishers of this series have pleasure in 
offering this valuable commentary on the most 

* Kose may be translated baby-talk — the mother's prattling 
in imitation of the imperfect articulation and ungrammatical 
speech of infants. The derivation of this word seems uncertain, 
but probably, as Grimm suggests, it came from the Latin caii- 
sari, to plead in court — like the French causer, to talk or chat — 
in the very earliest period of intercourse between Germans and 
Romans, inasmuch as the chief feature of a Roman court of law 
would impress strangers like Celts or Germans so strongly as to 
lead them to borrow the Latin word to describe it with. Later 
the word was used to describe altercation ; and then ordinary 
conversation ; and finally familiar chat (French, causerie ; also 
English colloquial coze for chat, see Murray's Dictionary ; and 
cousie, a gossip ; see also Dietz, Et. Worth, Rom. Spr., sub 
cosa). 



xvi EDITOK'S PREFACE. 

important of all Froebel's works, and trust that 
it may be kindly received by the large and in- 
creasing class of persons interested in tlie kin- 
dergarten. 

W. T. Harris. 

Washington, D. C, January 31, 1894. 



AUTHOE'S PKEFACE. 



Readers of this book will at once perceive 
its incompleteness. Lines of thought are indi- 
cated in the earlier chapters which are not sub- 
sequently developed. The Mutter- und Kose- 
lieder is treated under only one of its varied 
aspects. The gifts and occupations receive mere- 
ly incidental mention. The explanation of these 
facts is that only half of the book is written. As, 
however, many kindergartners express a need of 
help in the study of the Mutter- und Koselieder, 
it seems well to me to publish the finished chap- 
ters. The rest of the work shall follow so soon 
as I have time and strength to write it. 

Those of my readers who are familiar with 
the writings of Dr. Harris will recognize my 
indebtedness to him. The extent of this indebt- 
edness no one can realize so fully as myself. I 



xviii AUTHOR'S PREFACE. 

count it one of the great privileges of my life 
that my practical work in the kindergarten was 
begun and continued for seven years under his 
searching yet kindly criticism ; nor am I less 
grateful for the insights which have come to 
me from his books, his lectures, and his many 
monographs on philosophy and education. 

Susan E. Blow. 

Avon, N. Y., January SO, 1894. 



CONTENTS, 



CHAPTER 

I. — Atomism 

II. — Development .... 
III. — The Childhood of the Race 
IV — The Symbolism of Childhood 
v.— The Meaning of Play . 
VI. — Old Lady Gairfowl . , 
VII. — Pattern Experiences . 
VIII.— Vortical Education 



3 

19 

51 

81 

111 

149 

167 

213 



I. 

ATOxMISM. 



" Let us, then, I said, 
Leave this unknit republic to the scourge 
Of her own passions, and to regions haste 
Whose shades have never felt the encroaching axe, 
Or soil endured a transfer in the mart 
Of dire rapacity. There man abides, 
Primeval Nature's child. A creature weak 
In combination (wherefore else driven buck 
So far, and of his old inheritance 
So easily deprived ? ), but, for that cause, 
More dignified, and stronger in himself. 
Whether to act, judge, suffer, or enjoy. 
True, the intelligence of social ait 
Hath overpowered his forefathers, and soon 
Will sweep the remnant of his line away ; 
But contemplations, worthier, nobler far 
Than her destructive energies, attend 
His independence, when along the side 
Of Mississippi, or that northern stream 
That spreads into successive seas, he walks ; 
Pleased to perceive his own unshackled life, 
And his innate capacities of soul, 
There imaged : or when, having gained the top 
Of some commanding eminence, which yet 
Intruder ne'er beheld, he thence surveys 
Kegions of wood and wide savanna, vast 
Expanse of unappropriated earth. 
With mind that sheds a light on what he sees ; 
Free as the sun, and lonely as the sun. 
Pouring above his head its radiance down 
Upon a living and rejoicing world ! 
So, westward, tow'rd the unviolated woods 
I bent my way ; and roaming far and wide, 
Failed not to greet the merry mocking-bird ; 

But that pure archetype of human greatness, 
I found him not. There in his stead appeared 
A creature squalid, vengeful, and impure ; 
Eemorseless, and submissive to no law 
But superstitious fear and abject sloth." 

Wordsworth, The Excursion. 



CHAPTER I. 

ATOMISM. 

It has often been observed that the dominant 
idea of an age gives form alike to its science, its 
politics, its philosophy, its theology, and its edu- 
cation. Thus the age of scientific atomism was 
also an age of political atomism, reaching its cli- 
max in the French Revolution; of philosophic 
atomism as illustrated in the sense theory of 
knowledge, and carried to its logical consequences 
by Hume in the denial of causality and true self- 
hood ; of theological atomism, shown in the crude 
deism which excluded a kind of atomic divinity 
from that aggregate of atoms which could only 
by courtesy be called the universe ; and of edu- 
cational atomism, as set forth in the Emile of 
Rousseau. So, to-day, the reigning idea in all 
departments of thought is development, and we 
tirelessly repeat the evolutionary dictum, that 
" to know what a thing really is we must exam- 
ine how it came to be," 

As a theory of human nature, atomism was a 



4 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

creed witli two main articles. Of tliese, the first 
affirmed man to be by nature good ; the second 
declared arts, sciences, institutions — in short, 
eveTything produced by man — to be wholly bad. 
The only salvation for humanity lay in return to 
the primitive state of savagism ; and so soon as 
men realized their deplorable condition they 
would exclaim in bitterness of heart, "Thou, 
who disposest of our understandings, deliver us 
not up to the fatal arts and sciences of our fore- 
fathers, but restore us to ignorance, innocence, 
and indigence, which alone can make us happy 
and which are precious in thy sight." * 

Rousseau's attack upon civilization is whole- 
hearted, as may be seen in the following extracts 
from Emile : " All our wisdom consists in servile 
prejudices ; all our customs are only subjection, 
bondage, and restraint. Civilized man is born, 
lives, and dies in slavery ; at his birth he is con- 
fined in swaddling clothes ; at death he is nailed 
in a coffin. So long as he retains the human form 
he is fettered by our institutions."! Through 
this slavery character is debauched and courage 
destroyed; and man, unfit to live, is, "by the 
prescriptions of the physicians, the precepts of 

* Rousseau's Inquiry into tlie Effects of the Arts and Sci- 
ences. 

f Emile, (Gamier Freres), Paris, p. 31. 



ATOMISM. 5 

the philosopliers, and the prayers and exhorta- 
tions of the priest, made ignorant how to die." 
The only remedy for this state of things is isola- 
tion. " Men were not made to be crammed to- 
gether like ants in ant-hills, but to be scattered 
over the earth which it is their duty to cultivate. 
The more they collect together the more they 
corrupt each other. Infirmities of body and vices 
of the heart are the infallible effects of their too 
numerous concourse. Of all animals men are 
least adapted to live in herds. If they were 
crowded together as sheep are they would all 
perish in a short time. The breath of man is 
fatal to his fellows, nor is this less true in a 
figurative than in a literal sense." * 

In view of the corruption incident to human 
intercourse, Rousseau's first educational require- 
ment is the isolation of the pupil. As the soli- 
tary man Robinson Crusoe is the ideal human 
being, so the solitary education is the true educa- 
tion. Such persons as the pupil is forced to see 
must be so entirely dominated by the father or 
governor that he can calculate in advance their 
every word and act. In the ideal family life, as 
depicted in the New Hdloise, every servant in the 
house is represented as entering into the designs 
of the master for the education of his sons. In 

* ^fimile, Book I, p. 34. 



6 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Emile the same conditions are insisted upon. 
" You will never," says Rousseau, " be master of 
your pupil unless you are master of all those 
about him " ; * and though he admits that such 
domination is difficult, perhaps impossible, he 
insists that it must be the end aimed at, and that 
he who most nearly approaches it will be the 
most successful educator. 

Having secured the pupil so far as possible 
from the contamination of human intercourse, 
the ideal atomistic education may be safely begun 
by leaving him to the exercise of what Rousseau 
calls his " natural liberty." Here our author is 
in his element. " Let us," he says, " lay it down 
as an incontestable maxim that the first impulses 
of Nature are always right ; there is no original 
perversity in the human heart; there is not a 
single vice of which one may not discover how 
and whence it enters the soul." f The only thing 
necessary to make the pupil perfectly good is to 
leave him entirely free to do as he chooses. " A 
really free man wills only what he is able to do, 
and does what he pleases. This is a fundamental 
truth. Apply it to the state of childhood, and 
all the rules of education will flow from it." | 

"There is only one science," continues our 
author, " which should be taught children, and 

* fimile, p. 78. f ^bid., p. 7^ , t Ibid., p. 04. 



ATOMISM. 7 

that is the science of human duties." * This sci- 
ence is taught by carefully preserving the child 
from any sense of moral obligation. " The words 
command and obey should be ruled out of his 
dictionary, still more so, those of duty and ob- 
ligation." f 

"Never command the child to do the least 
thing. Do not let him even imagine that you 
claim to have any authority over him." | " Give 
him no kind of verbal lesson ; he should receive 
no lessons save from experience. Inflict upon 
him no kind of punishment, for he knows not 
what it is to be in fault. Never require him to 
ask pardon, for he is incapable of offending you. 
Lacking all sense of right and wrong, he can do 
nothing which is morally evil, or which merits 
either punishment or reproof." * 

Rousseau is not blind to the practical difficul- 
ties involved in allowing the child to do as he 
pleases. He avoids them to his own satisfaction 
by granting an apparent rather than a real free- 
dom. The pupil is constant!)^ watched, con- 
stantly duped, and, by a series of theatrical de- 
nouments, taught the nature of his acts. The 
artificiality and insincerity of the method are its 
sufficient condemnation. 

As Emile is made virtuous through insensi- 

* Emile, p. 24. f Ibid., p. 70. X Ibid., p. 73. # Ibid., p. 74. 



8 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

bility to moral obligation, so his mind is pre- 
pared for rational faith by being kept empty of 
all religious ideas. At fifteen years of age he 
hardly knows whether " he has or has not a soul," 
and is not yet " capacitated to believe in God." 
When, finally, the progress of his understanding 
leads him to religious inquiry, the " right use of 
his own reason will conduct him to the natural 
and true faith." This religion of reason, as Rous- 
seau proceeds to show, is that deism which, while 
professing to worship a transcendent divinity, 
really denies God altogether. The Savoyard 
vicar, into whose mouth Rousseau puts his own 
confession of faith, knows that the Deity exists, 
and that his existence is independent of any of 
his creatures ; but, adds he, " I no sooner inquire 
where he is, and what is his substance, than he 
eludes my thought, and my troubled spirit ceases 
to know anything." * This inscrutable Divinity 
is the Designer and Orderer of the world, but it 
is by no means sure that he is its creator. The 
vicar is doubtful whether there be one or two 
self-existent principles, and the idea of creation 
*' confounds his understanding." With regard to 
the soul, his view is equally vague. " I feel," he 
confesses, " that I have a soul ; I know this both 
from sentiment and from thought ; I know that 

* fimile, p. 309. 



ATOMISM. 9 

my soul is, but I know nothing of its essence, and 
I can not reason with regard to ideas which I do 
not possess." * One thing, however, incenses this 
rationalizing ecclesiastic, who knows nothing of 
the essence of God, or of the essence of the soul, 
and that is, to be told that God is a spirit and his 
soul likewise spiritual. "To conceive God and 
the soul as having the same nature " is the " de- 
basement of the divine essence." f Such is the 
theological atomism to which the right use of 
reason shall conduct Emile. It requires little 
mental acumen to perceive that this so-called de- 
ism is really atheism in disguise. 

As political atomism leads Rousseau to insist 
upon the isolation of the pupil, and theological 
atomism inspires his aversion to all religious 
teaching, so the taint of philosophic atomism 
may be recognized in the exaggerated emphasis 
he places upon the cultivation of the senses. 
Declaring sensation to be the source of thought, 
and affirming that in sensation the mind is wholly 
passive and receptive, he urges that, by control- 
ling the order of the child's sense-impressions, we 
may determine the future order of his ideas. 
Moreover, since no art can be practiced without 
the proper implements, and since the senses are 
the implements through which knowledge is ac- 

* feraile, I, p. 317. f Ibid., p. 319. 



10 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

quired, to exercise the child in seeing, hearing, 
touching, tasting, and smelling is to make him 
capable of thinking and of learning. It is need- 
less to expand these suggestions, for all readers 
familiar with the history of education will recog- 
nize in them the germ of the " object-lesson " which 
became so prominent a feature in the system of 
Pestalozzi. It may, however, be not unimportant 
to call attention to the fact that Pestalozzi's en- 
tire system was vitiated by his acceptance of the 
principle (fallen, since the time of Kant, into 
philosophic discredit), " Nothing in the intellect 
that was not previously in sense-perception." * 

* In opposition to the suggestion of Rousseau with regard to 
exercising the senses and restraining the activity of the mind 
may be urged the following considerations : 

1. In sensation itself the mind is not passive but active. To 
have a sensation is to " discriminate between an existing state 
of the self and other possible states." In deciding whether he 
is sleepy or hungry, whether he sees or hears, the infant exer- 
cises an activity of comparison. 

2. Sensations must be distinguished from perceptions, which 
arise only " when the mind brings to the aid of sense-impression 
the ideas of causality, space, and time, which are furnished by 
its own activity," Through the idea of causality the mind 
recognizes something " objectively existent as the producer of 
its sense-impressions." Through the idea of space it recognizes 
this objectively existent somewhat as having boundaries, and 
through the idea of time is enabled to perceive its changes. In 
perception, therefore, the mind exercises a higher degree of self- 
activity than in mere sensation. 

3. " Every act of perception is an act of recognition." This 
implies knowledge of the objects or attributes recognized. 



ATOMISM. 11 

To the exercise of the senses Rousseau adds 
that of the bodily powers, hut insists that the 
mind should be kept passive, and that during the 
period of childhood the aim of the teacher should 
be " to lose time " and to " train his pupil in the 
art of being ignorant." "If," concludes this 
lover of paradoxes, " you could do nothing and 
could prevent anything from being done ; if you 



" First the mind recognizes a sense-impression, and through 
that impression an object ; then the nature of the object ; its 
identities with well-known kinds of objects ; its individual dif- 
ferences from those well-known kinds of objects. But the dif. 
ferences are recognized as identical with well-known kinds of 
differences. It is the combination of different classes or kinds 
of attributes that enables the mind to recognize the individuality 
of the new object. It is like all others and different from all 
others." 

4. From these considerations it follows that the more the 
observer knows of the class of objects represented by the speci- 
men present to his senses, the more rapid will be the perceptive 
process. Knowing what to look for, he loses no time in des- 
ultory and futile observation. Knowledge of the ideal arche- 
types of objects incites the mind to observation and verification. 
Hence, to develop powers of quick perception, it is necessary 
not only to exercise the senses but to increase the pupil's stock 
of general ideas, and thus illuminate the mind that uses the 
senses. 

Readers interested in the philosophy of sense-perception are 
earnestly recommended to study carefully Dr. Harris's Thoughts 
on Educational Psychology, from which I have quoted freely in 
the foregoing remarks. Chapter VI, on "Time, Space, and 
Causality — Three Ideas that make Experience possible" — and 
Chapters IX, X, XI, on the Logic of Sense- Perception, will be 
found especially helpful. 
3 



12 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

could conduct your pupil healthy and strong to 
the age of twelve years without his being able to 
distinguish his right hand from his left, the eyes 
of his understanding would be open to reason 
from your first lesson. Without prejudices and 
without habits, there would be nothing in him 
to thwart your efforts. Soon he would become 
under your hands the wisest of men, and by be- 
ginning with doing nothing you would have 
made a prodigy of education." * 

A final mark of the influence of atomism over 
the mind of Rousseau may be traced in his at- 
tack upon books. " I hate books," he says, " for 
they only teach people to talk about what they 
do not understand." It is curious to hear Pesta- 
lozzi echoing these ideas, and inveighing against 
the art of printing, through which " eyes have 
become mere book-eyes, men book-men." It is 
more curious still to recall the number of books 
written by each of these enemies of books. 

When the age for instruction arrives, Rous- 
seau suggests that, in lieu of literary and lin- 
guistic studies, the pupil be taught a trade and 
be made to " invent the sciences." " No other 
book than the world, no other instruction than 
facts," t is the final dictum of this restless inno- 

* fimile, p. 76. 

t Barnard's Peslalozzi and Pestalozzianism, p. 73. 



ATOMISM. 13 

vator, who seems never to have reflected that 
facts are not fixed but expansive, and that only 
through the study of books wherein are garnered 
the fruits of all human observation and thought 
can the individual interpret aright his own 
partial and fragmentary experience. A pot of 
ferns is a fact, yet how different its import to 
the botanist and the child who, striving to in- 
terpret the unknown by the known, describes it 
as a pot of green feathers " ! * The earthworm is 
a fact, yet between the meaning of this fact to 
the boy who sees in it only bait for fishes and its 
meaning to Darwin the difference is incommen- 
surable. And not even to botanist and natu- 
ralist do plant and worm tell all their secrets. 
The fact which is opaque to the ignorant man 
and translucent to the specialist is transparent 
only to the thinker who has learned to see " by 
wholes," and who from star and stone, from 
flower and feeling, has broken a pathway to the 
Absolute Mind : 

" Flower in the crannied wall, 
I pluck you out of the crannies — 
Hold you here, root and all, in my hand. 
Little flower ; but if I could understand 
What you are, root and all, and all in all, 
I should know what God and man is." 

* See a short monograph entitled A Pot of Green Feathers, 
by T. G. Roopcr, M. A., published by C. W. Bardeen. Syracuse, 
N. Y. 



14: SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Rousseau's merit is that of the tornado and 
the conflagration, and we must always remem- 
ber with gratitude his burning attack upon that 
formalism which, by teaching signs instead of 
the things they signify, fortifies ignorance in the 
stronghold of self-satisfaction. He cleared the 
rubbish of centuries from the field of educational 
theory, and thus made it ready for fresh plow- 
ing and sowing. Moreover, in his insistence 
upon the study of the child he pointed out the 
indispensable condition of educational reform. 
The results of his own observation are sum- 
marized in the following striking passage from 
La Nouvelle H^loise * — a passage upon which its 
author stamps his approval by repeating it word 
for word in Emile : " Nature wishes children to 
be children before they are men. If we pervert 
this order we shall produce precocious fruits — 
fruits which have neither maturity nor savor, 
and are soon corrupted. "We shall have young 
sages and old children. Childhood has its pe- 
culiar manner of seeing, feeling, and thinking; 
nothing is less rational than the attempt to sub- 
stitute our own, and I should as soon think of 
requiring a child to be five feet high as to have 
judgment at ten years of age." 

* La Nouvelle Ileloise, Gamier Freres, Paris. fimile, 
p. 72. 



ATOMISM. 15 

This cursory survey of tlie educational prin- 
ciples of Rousseau lias been inspired by the fact 
that current opinion tends to exaggerate the cor- 
respondences and minimize the differences be- 
tween his views and those of Pestalozzi and 
Froebel. There are undoubtedly many points of 
resemblance between Pestalozzi and Rousseau, 
and likewise many points of resemblance be- 
tween Pestalozzi and Froebel, but the points 
wherein Pestalozzi agrees with Froebel are pre- 
cisely those wherein he differs from Rousseau. 
Between the views of Rousseau and those of 
Froebel there are in my judgment no affinities 
whatsoever. 



11. 

DEVELOPxMENT. 



" Because are thither pointed your desires 
Where by companionship eacli share is lessened 
Envy doth ply the bellows to your sighs. 
But if the love of the supernal sphere 
Should upwardly direct your aspiration, 
There would not be that fear within your breast ; 
For there, as much the more as one says Our, 
So much the more of good each one possesses, 
And more of charity in that cloister burns." 
" I am more hungering to be satisfied," 
I said, " than if I had before been silent. 
And more of doubt within my mind I gather. 
How can it be, that boon distributed 
The more possessors can more wealthy make 
Therein, than if by few it be possessed ? " 
And he to me : " Because thou flxest still 
Thy mind entirely upon earthly things. 
Thou pluckest darkness from the very light. 
That goodness infinite and ineffable 
Which is above there, runneth unto love, 
As to a lucid body comes the sunbeam. 
So much it gives itself as it finds ardor. 
So that as far as charity extends. 
O'er it increases the eternal valor. 
And the more people thitherward aspire. 
More are there to love well, and more they love there, 
And as a mirror, one rellects the other." 

Dante's Purgatory^ XV, Longfelloiv's Translation. 



CHAPTER II. 

DEVELOPMENT. 

The theory that the line of progress is not 
straight but spiral has never received more strik- 
ing confirmation than in the revolution which de- 
throned atomism and crowned the idea of devel- 
opment autocrat of the wide realms of thought. 
Atomism was the denial of unity and the nega- 
tion of process. It saw in the physical world a 
mere assemblage of independent " things " ; in 
*' things" mere congeries of atoms; in humanity 
an external aggregate of differing individuals ; 
and in knowledge nothing but sense-impressions, 
and the " faint images of these impressions called 
up in memory and thinking." In its view, more- 
over, the immediate phase of things was their 
reality, and the atom, the "noble" savage, and 
the sensation were respectively the truth of the 
physical world, of humanity, and of thought. 
Finally, it may be remarked that these assumed 
originals were themselves mere abstractions of 
the understanding, for atoms are the hypothetical 



20 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

results of analysis ; the " noble savage " has never 
existed save in the minds of Rousseau and his dis- 
ciples, and the sensations so loudly declared to be 
the source of thought are themselves only known 
by isolating them from the totality of experience. 
The idea of development, on the contrary, has in- 
cited thought to an ever-widening synthetic ac- 
tivity. It has detached our gaze from objects to 
fasten it upon the energies which produce ob- 
jects. It has impelled science to the conclusion 
that the laws of Nature, as well as the objects of 
Nature, have arisen through a process of evolu- 
tion, and has inspired the corresponding psycho- 
logic doctrine that both the ideas and the so- 
called faculties of mind are the products of its 
own self-activity. It has shed fresh light upon 
the spiritual unity of mankind, and made it im- 
possible for any new Rousseau to resuscitate the 
atomic individual. It has convinced us that the 
original state of man was not his ideal state, and 
that the golden age is yet to come. Nay, more : 
it has shown that, in truth, human nature exists 
only as it is created by self -activity, and that it 
is realized in the individual only through his par- 
ticipation in the results achieved by the race. In 
a word, it has pointed out, in every sphere, the 
priority of energy over being, revealed the active 
and universal as the originating source of the 



DEVELOPMENT. 21 

static and particular, and thus, while satisfying 
the craving of the mind for unity, thrilled the 
heart with the beauty of process. 

This rapid extension of the idea of develop- 
ment into all provinces of thought recalls the 
Hindu story of " the tiny Brahman who, to hum- 
ble the pride of King Bali, begs of him as much 
sand as he can measure in three steps. When 
the boon is granted, the tiny dwarf expands into 
the gigantic form of Vishnu, and, striding with 
one step across the earth, another across the air, 
and a third across the sky, drives Bali down into 
the infernal regions." * This story, usually in- 
terpreted as a myth of the sunrise, illustrates 
equally the sunrise of a new idea. Thus devel- 
opment, with one step across the earth has taken 
possession of our science, with another step across 
the sky has appropriated our theology, and strid- 
ing across the air has made psychology and edu- 
cation its own forever. 

The application of the idea of development to 
education has been in large measure the work of 
Pestalozzi and Froebel. To the former we owe 
the ideal of education as the harmonious devel- 
opment of inherent powers ; to the latter must be 
accorded the honor of having first clearly per- 
ceived the manifold implications of this ideal. 

* Anthropology, E. B. Tylor, p. 397. 



22 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

The mind of Pestalozzi was a battle-ground be- 
tween the idea of development and the atomism 
he had inherited from Rousseau. Over the mind 
of Froebel the new ideal held sole and supremo 
sway, and so clear to him was its paramount sig- 
nificance that he could boldly afErm he would 
rather win from a tiny sand grain the history of 
its development than learn from God himself 
the structure of the universe. 

The tendency of mind to make a symbol of 
Nature is illustrated afresh in every period of sci- 
entific advance. Thus, no sooner does Newton 
formulate the law of universal gravitation, than 
Swedenborg perceives therein " a mere external 
of the irresistible attractions of affection and 
faith." In like manner, Schelling recognizes in 
the opposing poles of the magnet a symbol of 
human consciousness, and Pestalozzi and Froebel 
discover myriad analogies between the evolution 
of physical organisms and the development of 
mind. 

It should, however, always be remembered 
that an analogy is not a definition. It is as false 
and misleading to call the child an organism as 
it is stimulating to discover correspondences be- 
tween the unfolding of his self -activity and the 
growth of plants and animals. The child's body 
is an organism in the true sense of the word, for 



DEVELOPMENT. 23 

it is "a whole composed of parts which are re- 
ciprocally means and ends " ; his mind is not an 
organism, for it is not composed of parts, neither 
is it separable into distinct faculties. It is a self- 
active energy, having different phases of mani- 
festation, but present wholly in each phase. It 
expresses itself in feeling, thought, and will, but 
there is no feeling in which thought and will are 
not latent — no true thought which does not incite 
a corresponding feeling and issue in an act — no 
genuine deed which is not the embodiment alike 
of feeling and of thought. "Living (feeling), 
acting, conceiving," said Froebel, " form a triple 
chord within each child of man, though the 
sound, now of this string, now of that, and then 
again of two together, may often preponderate." * 

Keeping carefully in mind their merely sym- 
bolic character, physical correspondences may be 
found helpful in the study of spiritual growth. 
Availing myself of this help, I shall endeavor in 
the following pages to point out the conditions 
of development, its successive stages, its essential 
characteristics, and its conformity to ideal types. 

The most obvious correspondence between the 
unfolding of the mind and the growth of organ- 
isms is that in both the condition of development 
is exercise of power. Use and disuse, long since 

* Aus Froebel's Leben, p. 143. 



24 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

recognized in the parable of the talents as the 
sources of spiritual gain and loss, have in our 
day come to be insisted upon as the sources of all 
gain and all loss. Use gives the blacksmith his 
brawny arm, the musician his nimble and flexible 
fingers, and the thinker his power of marshaling 
at will the battalions of his ideas. Disuse takes 
from the caged bird the power of flight, from the 
sedentary student the vigor of his limbs, from 
the man who indolently refuses to think and act 
the power of thought and action. Pestalozzi 
struck the keynote of educational reform when 
he wrote, in the Evening Hour of a Hermit : 
" Nature develops all the powers of humanity by 
exercising them ; they increase with use." 

But though exercise is the indispensable con- 
dition of development, not all exercise is devel- 
oping. The bird that flies too soon cripples its 
wings ; the child who walks too soon deforms his 
legs. Only that exercise which is proportioned 
to strength increases strength. All other is pro- 
ductive of harm. 

Again, as an organism has many members, it 
is very easy through the undue exercise of one 
member to dwarf and even destroy others. In 
like manner mind may be deformed by the exag- 
geration of single phases of its activity. The 
undue exercise of thought dulls feeling and weak- 



DEVELOPMENT. 25 

ens will. The undue exercise of will contracts 
thought and so centralizes feeling as to impair 
social sympathy. The undue exercise of feeling 
dissolves thought into dreams and sinks will 
into vain desire. Nor is this all : for the abstract 
exercise of a single power, by weakening others, 
finally destroys itself. Isolated from feeling and 
will, thought congeals into formulas ; isolated 
from thought and will, feeling relapses into mere 
sensation; isolated from thought and thought- 
illumined feeling, will petrifies into mechanical 
habit, or loses itself in the delirium of caprice. 
The harmonious development of mind implies, 
therefore, the equipoise of its several phases of 
activity. 

To these generally recognized conditions of 
development must be added one upon which 
Froebel placed great stress. A physical organ- 
ism develops by converting material appropri- 
ated from its environment into vegetable cells 
or animal tissues. In other words, it assimilates 
foreign material, and by assimilation impresses 
upon this material its own image. In the for- 
mative instinct of childhood Froebel discerned 
an analogous attempt of mind to stamp itself 
upon its environment. The child is constantly 
trying either to change something or to make 
something. This persistent effort hints to us 



26 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

that mind is somothing more than an intellectual 
stomach. Knowledge is food, but creation is life, 
and we do not live to eat, but eat to live. 

Even as I write, I am conscious of stating 
a half truth. For if it be true that the end of 
knowledge is creation, it is at least equally true 
that the end of creation is knowledge. In the 
products of his activity man beholds himself 
as in a mirror. Creation, therefore, culminates 
in revelation. Froebel never loses sight of these 
two aspects of mind ; and if he tells us that 
" man made in the image of God must from the 
beginning of life be conceived and treated as a 
creative being," he insists with equal force that 
" to become conscious of self is the first business 
of the child and the whole business of man." 

A second correspondence between physical 
and mental growth may be found in the fact 
that, while each stage of development has its own 
marked and characteristic features, it always de- 
ponds upon that which precedes and foreshadows 
that which follows it. " The fundamental law of 
vegetable life," says Froebel, " is that each suc- 
cessive stage of development is a higher growth 
of the preceding one — e. g., the petals are trans- 
formed ordinary leaves, the stamens and pistils 
transformed petals. Each successive formation 
presents the essential nature of the plant in a 



y 



DEVELOPJMENT. 27 

more subtile garb, until at last it seems clotbed 
only in a delicate perfume." * In like manner 
we may say of the mind, that its so-called " facul- 
ties " are not separate and independent powers, 
but manifestations of ascending degrees of con- 
sciousness. It is interesting in this connection to 
note that Goethe — whose novel Wilhelm Meister 
is the greatest book on education ever written — 
was also one of the discoverers of plant metamor- 
phosis. Possibly he may have been thinking of 
the parallel between the two orders of develop- 
ment when he called flowers " the beautiful hie- 
roglyphics of Nature." 

The greatest mistakes in education are rooted 
in the failure to recognize and conform to the 
different stages of natural development. Educa- 
tional theorists are constantly pointing out this 
error ; educational practice is constantly repeat- 
ing it. Notwithstanding all that has been said 
and written, we still make knowledge our idol, 
and continue to fill the child's mind with foreign 
material, under the gratuitous assumption that 
at a later age he will be able, through some 
magic transubstantiation, to make it a vital part 
of his own thought. This is like loading his 
stomach with food which ho can not digest, 
under the delusive hope that he may be able to 

* Education of Man, Ilailmann's translation, p. 194. 
4 



28 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

digest it when lie is a man. It is forcing the 
mind to move painfully forward under a heavy 
weight, instead of running, leaping, and flying 
under the incitement of its own energy and the 
allurement of its own perceived ideal. 

Thus to load the young mind is a grievous sin ; 
but we commit a yet more heinous offense when 
we insist upon the exercise of faculties whose 
normal development belongs to a later age. The 
child is sympathetic, perceptive, and imaginative, 
but he is incapable of sustained observation and 
repelled by analysis and logical inference. The 
very flowers he loves so dearly become mere in- 
struments of mental torture when we constantly 
insist upon his analyzing and classifying them. 
The attempt to force a premature activity of rea- 
son can result only in the repulsion of his sym- 
pathies and the stultification of his mind.* 

But glaring as are our sins of commission, 
they pale before our sins of omission ; for, while 
we are forcing upon the child's mind knowledge 



* It may be well to point out the distinction between con- 
scious and unconscious reasoning. Doubtless a great deal of 
unconscious reasoning goes on in the mind of the child. Rea- 
son is also immanent in feeling and instinct. Dr. Harris has 
shown that sense-perception is an unconscious syllogistic 
process. (See his Thoughts on Educational Psychology.) Edu- 
cation, however, should deal with powers only as they become 
explicit. 



DEVELOPMENT. 29 

wliich has no roots in his experience, or calling 
on him to exercise still dormant powers, we 
refuse any aid to his spontaneous struggle to 
do and learn and be that which his stage of de- 
velopment demands. We paralyze the spirit 
of investigation by indifference to the child's 
questions, clip the wings of imagination by not 
responding to his poetic fancies, kill artistic 
effort by scorning its crude results, and freeze 
sympathy by coldness to its appeal. Thus re- 
maining an alien to the child's life and forcing 
upon the child a life that is foreign to him, we 
sow in weak natures the seeds of formalism and 
hypocrisy, and so antagonize the strong natures 
that we tempt them to become intellectual and 
moral outlaws. 

In all attempts to conform to the different 
stages of natural development we must, however, 
be careful to recognize the fact that they pass 
into each other by insensible gradations. One of 
the clearest marks of Rousseau's atomism is that 
he so completely isolates the different periods of 
life as to lose the identity of his imaginary pupil ; 
and it has been well said that the Emile of the 
last three books is an entirely different person 
from the Emile of the first two. Froebel, on the 
contrary, perceived clearly that "differences in 
kind result from the graduall accumulation of 



30 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

differences in degree/' and tlie idea of continuity 
in education is scarcely less dear to him than 
that of creative self-activity. " Sharp limits and 
definite subdivisions within the continuous series 
of the years of development " are, he declares, 
" highly pernicious and even destructive in their 
influence " ; and he is perpetually seeking for the 
transitions through which the lower faculties of 
the mind are merged in the higher, as well as 
for the transitions through which the different 
objects of experience may be connected into a 
living whole. His insight into the truth that 
evolution " proceeds by numerous, successive, and 
slight modifications" makes him the pedagogic 
exponent of the Zeitgeist of our age; and all 
teachers who are interested in the "developing 
method " should study his writings and acquaint 
themselves practically with his games, gifts, and 
occupations. 

To Froebel the most interesting correspond- 
ence between the unfolding of thought and the 
growth of plants and animals lay in the char- 
acteristics which constitute the very idea of de- 
velopment. Comparing the mind of the young 
child with that of the mature and educated man, 
we find that the former has few ideas, and that 
such as he has are abstract, indefinite, and held 
in isolation the one from the other; while the 



DEVELOPMENT. 31 

latter not only possesses an Infinitude of partic- 
ular thoughts, but has articulated these thoughts 
into a systematized unity. In like manner, or- 
ganisms develop by an advance in structure from 
the homogeneous to the heterogeneous, their 
growth beginning in the differentiation of an 
originally uniform germ, and through a continu- 
ous repetition of this process completing itself in 
the production of a membered totality in whose 
maintenance an almost countless number of or- 
gans find their own fulfillment. In other words, 
as thought unfolds by dissolving an ever-increas- 
ing multiplicity of differences into a higher unity 
of self-consciousness, so an organism develops by 
"working out diversities of member, form, and 
function, and at the same time in the very act of 
differentiating, reintegrating its diversities into 
the common unity." * To this correspondence 
Froebel is perpetually recurring, and occasion- 
ally his manner of stating it gives color to the 
idea that he borrowed the law of development 
from Nature, and, making the " tree his tutor," 
learned from physical organisms how to aid the 
mind in its struggle to become actually what it 
is ideally. But the careful study of Froebel's 
works revolutionizes this opinion. He was not 
one of those who love to find " natural law in the 

* See Caird's Philosophy of Religion, p. 108. 



32 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

spiritual world/' but rather one who only cared 
for Nature because lie had penetrated her dis- 
guise and beheld in all her varying forms the 
shining lineaments of mind. " There exists no 
other energy/^ he once said, " but that of thought. 
The law of thought is the law of the Cosmos." * 
And, again, he wrote to Krause, the philosopher, 
" I consider the movement from analysis to syn- 
thesis, which I find in pure thought, as the type 
and law of all development." f 

The practical bearing of the thoughts just 
considered is obvious. If education is to con- 
form to the natural process of development it 
must seek in childhood to quicken sympathy and 
enlarge the range of perception. It must aid the 
boy to find the relations between observed facts, 
while to the youth it should reveal the unity 
underlying these relations, and gradually lead 
him in each department of study to " see the 
whole in the part." Finally, as the youth ma- 
tures, it should discover to him the implications 
of all knowledge, and through philosophy — " the 
science of sciences" — teach him to combine all 
partial wholes into one great totality. Other- 
wise his thought will resemble " not a connected 

* Wichard Lange's Darlegung der Gnindidee Froebel's, 
p. 13. 

f Alls Froebel's Leben, p. 140. 



DEVELOPMENT. 33 

structure, but an aggregate of chambers, from 
none of which he can enter the others — a build- 
ing wherein he must always get lost and can 
never feel himself at home." * 

Though the correspondences thus far con- 
sidered shed some light upon the nature, the con- 
ditions, and the stages of mental evolution, our 
ideal of education as the harmonious develop- 
ment of inherent powers remains very vague ; 
for without a standard by which development 
may be tested, how can we know whether it is or 
is not harmonious ? A new analogy may shed 
light upon our difficulty. Returning to the 
plant, we observe that in its growth it always 
conforms to the model of its species. Its roots 
and stalk, its branches and leaves, its flowers and 
fruit express in various forms the compulsion of 
an ideal type. Pondering this fact, we seem to 
catch from Nature a hint that the harmonious 
development of man must mean the gradual pro- 
duction in the individual of the image of the race. 
That this hint may not mislead us, we must how- 
ever qualify it by considering the vast differ- 
ence between the relationship of a particular 
plant to its species and the relationship between 
individual man and the human race. Through- 

* Fichte's Science of Knowledge. 



34 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

out the physical realm the particular illustrates 
the universal, but is never coextensive with it, 
and just on this account Nature shows us no true 
and abiding individuals. As a merely natural 
being, man is subject to the same limitation, and 
the human species falls apart into races, these 
into tribes, and tribes into mutually excluding 
individuals, each one of whom is a more or less 
defective specimen of the general type. In mind, 
on the contrary, the generic energy is one with 
its product, and hence the ideal self in each man 
is identical with the ideal self in every other 
man. Spiritual humanity is not a whole com- 
posed of parts, but a whole composed of wholes ; 
a totality wherein each individual is also total. 
Therefore, white men, red men, and black men — 
men of the tropics and men of the poles — may 
learn to think the same thoughts and to obey the 
same ideals. Instinctive faith in this spiritual 
unity of mankind inflames missionary zeal and 
carries to cannibal savages the message of 
" peace and good will." Animated by the same 
faith, each one of us claims his portion in the 
vision of the poet, the triumph of the hero, and 
the prayer of the saint : 

" I am the owner of the sphere, 
Of the seven stars and the solar year, 
Of Caesar's hand and Plato's brain, 
Of Lord Christ's heart and Shakespeare's strain." 



DEVELOPMENT. 35 

Froebel expresses this relationship of man to 
mankind by the somewhat untranslatable word 
Gliedganzes (member-whole) — a word we shall 
probably have to adopt from the German, as we 
have already adopted the word Kindergarten. 
Imaging humanity as an organic whole, he con- 
ceives the individual, on the one hand, as a 
member of this organism, and on the other as 
the organism itself in its ideal totality. Individ- 
ual man is but a leaf upon the tree Yggdrasill, 
yet potentially he is himself that great world- 
ash. He is, however, the whole only in virtue of 
the fact that he is also the member; or, stated 
differently, he realizes his ideal nature through 
participation in the life of mankind. Moreover, 
since physical evolution culminates in man, the 
reproduction of the race within the individual 
makes actual the ideal under whose blind im- 
pulsion Nature mounts the ascending spires of 
being. And as generic humanity fulfills and in- 
terprets Nature, Nature must be the prophecy 
and symbol of mind. Therefore, man may find 
intimations of his own being in the course of the 
stars and the fall of the stone, in the shining 
world of crystals and the circular process of or- 
ganic life. 

The longer we reflect upon Froebel's defini- 
tion of man as Gliedganzes the more sugges- 



36 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

tive it becomes. Concentrating attention first 
upon that pliase of the definition which afiirms 
that each man is ideally mankind, there dawns 
slowly upon us the vision of mind as a generic 
and therefore self -creative energy. Wo picture 
to ourselves a musician, who is also the instru- 
ment he uses and the symphony he plays; a 
sulptor, who is himself the clay he models and the 
statue ho produces ; a master-builder, who is also 
the quarry whence comes his marble and the 
temple he rears. Then, as our thought grows 
clearer, we throw away our pictures of the un- 
picturable, and, gazing directly upon the miracle 
of mind, behold an energy which, acting upon 
itself as material, realizes itself as result; an 
energy self -impelling, self-fulfilling, and self- 
revealing ; an energy which starting from itself 
returns to itself only to be incited to fresh wan- 
derings which culminate in deeper returns ; in a 
word, an energy which, in the most literal sense, 
" is what it makes itself to be " — a self-product. 

Very wonderful is this vision of mind, but we 
may not dwell upon it, for the Gliedganzes has 
other secrets to reveal. It is the paradox of mind, 
that while free and self-creative it yet imj)lies re- 
lationship. It is independent but not solitary. 
To be social is its nature, and a mind existing 
apart from and out of relation to other minds is 



DEVELOPMENT. 37 

a logical impossibility. Indeed, mind is in no 
sense a possession of the individual, but a uni- 
versal energy in which all individuals partici- 
pate. As Dante teaches us in the Purgatory, 
spiritual energies grow by giving, by spending 
are increased, and in the distribution of spiritual 
food the miracle of the loaves and the fishes is 
perpetually renewed. The more thought com- 
municates itself, the more truly it possesses it- 
self ; the more completely love loses itself in its 
object, the more surely does it find its own fulfill- 
ment. Only through membership and the com- 
munion which membership implies does man 
make actual his ideal nature ; only in so far as 
he becomes universal is he in any true sense 
individual. 

" Man," says Plato, in the Timseus, " is a plant 
not of an earthly but of a heavenly growth ; . . . 
and the divine power suspended the head and 
root of him from that place where the genera- 
tion of the soul first began, . . . There is only one 
way," he adds, " in which one being can attend 
on another, and this is by giving him his natural 
food and motion. And the motions which are 
naturally akin to the divine principle within us 
are the thoughts and revolutions of the uni- 
verse." Can we find anywhere a truer descrip- 
tion of man, a higher definition of education ? 



38 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Man is a tree, whose roots are in the sky. He 
must be nourished by ideals. These ideals are 
revealed to him in " the thoughts and revolutions 
of the universe." They also constitute his own 
inmost selfhood. In the symbols of Nature, the 
institutions of society, the achievement of his- 
tory, and the products of literature and art, man 
is confronted by his own ideal self. Wandering 
away from himself into these seemingly foreign 
realms, the individual for the first time finds 
himself at home. 

As man receives from mankind the ideals 
through which he realizes his own implicit na- 
ture, it is evident that he is creative only in so 
far as he is receptive. He produces himself by 
reproducing humanity within himself. We must, 
therefore, qualify the illustrations above given 
by saying that he is a true musician only if, like 
St. Cecilia, he has first heard the heavenly mu- 
sic ; a true sculptor only if his statue conforms 
to " the measure of a man " ; a true builder only 
in so far as the temple he rears is like unto " the 
pattern shown in the mount." 

It may be urged that, since the cosmic ideal 
can not be made actual in the individual in any 
finite time, our definition of education is not a 
practical one. The question, however, is not one 
of reaching a goal, but of moving toward it. 



DEVELOPMENT. 39 

When Margaret Fuller somewliat condescend- 
ingly remarked to Carlyle that " she accepted the 
universe," he answered grimly, " It was as well 
she did." There is a mine of wisdom in this curt 
rejoinder. We can make no headway against 
the stream of universal tendency ; or, more de- 
voutly stated, unless we conspire with Provi- 
dence all our educational effort must prove futile. 
" It is a sufi&cient account," says Emerson, " of 
that appearance we call the world that God will 
teach a human mind." The true educator is he 
who clearly discerns the divine ideal and shapes 
his own effort in accordance therewith. It needs, 
moreover, only a moment's reflection to assure us 
that no matter how we define education, it is a 
process which implies eternity for its realization. 
In the fact that man is susceptible of education 
lies the assurance of his immortality. On the 
other hand, in that man has a sense of imperfec- 
tion, he shows that there is in him even now a 
standard of perfection. He knows himself as 
ignorant because he has an ideal of knowledge, 
and as evil because he has an ideal of holiness. 
This perception of his limit proves that he has 
already annulled it. Hence, while in one sense 
he has infinite realms to conquer, in another 
sense these realms are already his. The process 
of education, therefore, is one wherein the peace 



40 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

of possession is combined with the ardor of pur- 
suit, and through all the struggle of the passing 
years man may enjoy the " holy carelessness of 
the everlasting now." 

But the individual is not only total humanity 
in embryo ; he is also a particular man, a being 
with sentiments, caprices, and opinions peculiar 
to himself. Though ideally the world-ash Ygg- 
drasill, he is also one of its countless leaves — has 
the leaf nature as well as the tree nature, and is 
thus actually partial while potentially universal. 
His nature is inherently a self-contradiction, and 
education, in its deepest sense, is the process 
through which this contradiction is canceled. 

Arrived at this point in the study of man's 
complex being, we begin to suspect that develop- 
ment is something more than the mere unfolding 
of inherent powers, and that the process by which 
man ascends into the species (or, in other words, 
makes actual his own ideal) is not adequately 
described even by the word self-production, but 
involves also the idea of self-annihilation. Again 
recurring to the musician and artist, we must 
now insist that man becomes musical by over- 
coming discord and achieves beauty through the 
slow transformation of original ugliness. It is 
by slaying caprice that he attains rational will, 
by renouncing opinion that he gains truth, by 






DEVELOPMENT. 41 

crucifying selfishness tliat lie conquers selfhood. 
The countless fox princes and frog princes of 
fairyland who go about seeking for a benevolent 
murderer, because only by dying as animals can 
they regain their royal state, are true types of 
the particular man who, like them, must die that 
the universal man may live. 

Renunciation, self -surrender, self-abnegation 
— how familiar the words, yet how they dilate 
with ever- widening meaning ! To the Hindu 
devotee, renunciation means the slaying not only 
of selfishness but of self-consciousness : when he 
has so paralyzed his body that he feels no sensa- 
tion, and so paralyzed his mind that he has no 
thought, then, and not till then, has he attained 
Nirvana. To the monkish ascetic, renunciation 
means the sacrifice of this world for the pos- 
session of the world to come. To the man of 
science, it means the surrender of his most dar- 
ling theory to the stern reality of facts ; to the 
hero, the merging of self in his cause; to the 
patriot, the sacrifice of life upon the altar of his 
country. To the humble saint, it means the sur- 
render of his will to his Saviour, and of his life 
to the service of his brother ; to the mystic, the 
sinking of himself in God, that he may find God 
in himself. Finally, to the Christian philoso- 
pher, renunciation is a phase in the process of 



42 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

self-realization, the ascent of the individual into 
the species by the way of the cross. Further- 
more, the philosopher recognizes in such ascent 
the incarnation of the divine in the human, and 
with this insight interprets the " dramatic tend- 
ency" of Nature, as the striving of Nature to 
become man, and knows that the " lifting of the 
manhood into God " shall be the goal of history ; 
is, indeed, the " far-off divine event to which the 
whole creation moves." 

One aspect of the Oliedganzes remains to be 
considered. We have seen that individual de- 
velopment means a progressive conformity to the 
generic type. It is evident, however, that even 
in the race this type is very imperfectly realized, 
and that humanity, as a whole, is itself in a pro- 
cess of evolution. This fact suggests another 
implication in the idea of membership. The in- 
dividual who reaps the rich result of mankind's 
vicarious struggle is in duty bound to augment 
his inheritance. As he has freely received, he 
must freely give, and, by adding to the store of 
human experience some mite of knowledge or 
some atom of achievement, swell the treasure 
which is to be lavished upon coming men. 

Perhaps the most touching passage in all lit- 
erature is that in which the hero of Troy prays 
for a son more heroic than himself. Gladly will 



DEVELOPMENT. 43 

Hector die in battle with the Greeks if the gods 
grant that his son may rule nobly in Ilium. The 
glory of living is to transmit a higher life. The 
dying flame burns on in the brighter flame which 
it has kindled. 

The prayer of the hero utters the craving 
of all human hearts. Everywhere man strives 
and toils to make his children better than him- 
self. Ignorance is ambitious that its children 
shall be wise, and Sin rarely so sinful as not 
to pray that its babes may be unstained. And 
what father and mother crave for their chil- 
dren, each generation as a whole craves for the 
generations that are to follow it. It looks to 
the young life which it has borne and cradled 
to make facts of its aspirations and realities of 
its dreams. For the young it crowns again the 
discrowned illusions of youth and sets up once 
more the broken altars of its faith. Humanity 
declares its unity by living forever in the future. 
Only man plants that posterity may reap, suffers 
that posterity may enjoy, dies that posterity may 
live, and ever the highest hero goes out into the 
battle of the age, praying, as he looks upon the 
young. " May they say these men are nobler than 
their fathers were ! " 

It is in the conception of man as Qliedganzes 
that Froebel advances beyond Pestalozzi. Domi- 



4:4 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

nated by the atomistic view of man, Pestalozzi 
was never able to grasp the significance of social 
institutions. In his Inquiry into the Course of 
Nature in the Development of the Human Race 
he assumes three states of man — an original state 
of nature, a transitional social state, a final moral 
state. The moral state is reached, however, not 
by a reaction of the social state upon the indi- 
vidual but by the individual's self-emancipation 
from its influence. " The moral man is not the 
work of society." " The kindliness and straight- 
forwardness of the animal man are replaced in 
the social man by ill will and cunning.'' " The 
social state, bringing with it on the one hand a 
spirit of dominion, and on the other hand a state 
of subjection, indefinitely increases men's natural 
inequalities as well as their pride and ambition." 
Finally, " while the religion of the natural man 
is idolatry, that of the social man is deceit." 
"True religion exists for the moral man alone, 
for man can only find God by the searchings of 
his own heart, and in so far as he still preserves 
God's image in himself." * 

Very evidently with such views it was impos- 
sible for Pestalozzi to see in institutions the 
revelation of man's larger selfhood, and, failing 

* See the summing up of the Inquiry in the excellent biog- 
raphy of Pestalozzi by Roger de Guimps, pp. 113-115. 



DEVELOPMENT. 45 

this vision, it was impossible for him to define 
the ** harmonious development" which was his 
ideal of education. Therefore his educational 
experiments, while suggestive, were always felt 
by competent observers to be disappointing, and 
his methods merited the criticism of crudeness 
and empiricism which Froebel made upon them. 
Pestalozzi lets us into the secret of his life 
and work when he says, " Through my heart I 
am what I am." He was an educator because he 
was a philanthropist. He pleaded for universal 
education because he saw therein the only effect- 
ive means of lessening human misery. As he 
tells us in the Song of the Swan, he " desired at 
first nothing else than to render the ordinary 
means of instruction so simple as to permit of 
their being employed in every family." Search- 
ing for the elements of particular branches of 
instruction, he was led to ask what were the 
prime elements of all knowledge. Finding in 
number, form, and words the " alphabet of know- 
ing," he sought to supplement it by an " alphabet 
of doing," but in the attempt to find the elements 
of technical skill he was confessedly a failure. 
From the search for the elements of knowledge 
and skill there was an easy transition to the 
thought of the germinal activities of mind and to 
the definition of education as the " development 



46 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

of inherent powers." Finally, enlightened by the 
endeavor " to psychologize education/' Pestalozzi 
perceived that "the forces of the heart, faith 
and love, do for immortal man what the root 
does for the tree," and that "the center and 
essential principle of education is not teaching, 
but love." With these recognitions his system 
attained all the completeness possible without 
that insight into the relationship between the 
race and the individual which discloses the sig- 
nificance of institutions and unveils the meaning 
of history. 

The reverence and affection which all men 
feel for Pestalozzi is accorded neither to his 
theoretical insight nor his practical achievement. 
Because "he lived as a pauper with paupers to 
teach paupers to live like men," we love him. 
Because he first dared to claim for all men the 
right to be educated, we revere him. Upon the 
strong foundation of this generous claim his 
fame is "builded far from accident," and, frankly 
admitting that his psychology is false and his 
method defective, we nevertheless recognize in 
him the noblest example the world has yet shown 
of the hero as educator. 

The doctrine of the GUedganzes has been a 
stumbling stone and rock of offense to many of 
Froebel's interpreters and critics. By some he 



DEVELOPMENT. 47 

has been reproached with wasting much time in 
unprofitable speculations about parts and wholes. 
By others it is loudly hinted that educational 
theories are of slight value, and that our sole 
practical concern is with methods and instru- 
mentalities.* Such views are rooted in that fa- 
vorite fallacy of half -fledged minds which divorces 
practice from theory, character from creed, will 
from intellect. The true disciple of Froebel, on 
the contrary, will recognize in the doctrine of 
the Gliedganzes the ripest fruit of the master's 
thinking, the key to his practical endeavor, and 
the source of that symbolism which is his most 
original contribution to educational science. 

Finally, the conception of man as Gliedganzes f 
of humanity supplies a standard by which all 
systems of education may be tested. See man as 
a whole and not as also a member, and you have 
Rousseau's atomic Emile, who at the climax, or 
rather, anticlimax, of an atomistic education re- 
marks to his atomic tutor that for such a su- 



* Is not the decrier of theories himself simply a theorist, 
whose theory is that there should be no theory ? 

f For Froebel's own statements of the doctrine of the Glied- 
ganzes, see Aus Froebel's Leben, edited by Dr. Wichard Lange, 
p. 489 ; Die Mensehen Erziehuiif^ und Aufsiitze verschiedenen 
Inhalts, edited by Dr. Wichard Lange, p. 499 et seq. Padagogik 
dcs Kindergartens, Wichard Lange, pp. 2, 6, 87, 133, 153, 234, 
323, 324, 346. 



48 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

premely independent atom as himself the world 
of organized society is no fit place. See man as 
member and not also as whole, and you lapse 
into the Orientalism of education ; for, granting 
validity to institutions without perceiving that 
they exist both in and for the individual, you see 
in your pupil not an end but a means, and strive 
not to develop him but to mold him by ex- 
ternal pressure into a prescribed form. See man 
as both member and whole, without perceiving 
the contradiction therein implied, and you fall 
into the indolent sentimentalism whose motto is 
laissez-faire, and which expects development 
without that strife of opposing forces which is 
its inevitable condition. See man as he is — actu- 
ally a member, ideally the whole of humanity — 
the incarnate opposition of particular and uni- 
versal, and you define truly both the substance 
and the method of education. For its substance 
is the experience of that total humanity which is 
the ideal self of the pupil ; its method such in- 
citement of his self-activity as shall impel him 
to renounce indolence, caprice, and vanity, and 
to reproduce spontaneously that total experience 
within himself. 



in. 

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 



II WiTHotJT the spiritual, observe, 
The natural's impossible, no form, 
No motion ; without sensuous, spiritual 
Is inappreciable, no beauty or power ; 
And in this twofold sphere, the twofold man 
(For still the artist is intensely a man) 
Holds firmly by the natural to reach 
The spiritual beyond it, fixes still 
The type with mortal vision to j^ierce tlirough 
With eyes immortal to the antetypo 
Some call the ideal, better called the real ; 
And certain to be called so presently 
When things shall have their names." 

" Every natural flower which grows on earth 
Implies a flower upon the spiritual side, 
Substantial, archetypal, all aglow 
With blossoming causes, not so far away, 
But wo whoso spirit sense is somewhat cleared 
May catch at something of the bloom and breath, 
Too vaguely apprehended, though, indeed, 
Still apprehended, consciously or not. 
And still transferred to picture, music, verse, 
For thrilling audient and beholding souls." 

Aurora Leigh, Mrs. Bkowninq. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 

The conception of man as Gliedganzes quick- 
ens our sense of the significance of history. If 
humanity is neither a mere aggregate of atomic 
individuals, nor a mere organism whose mem- 
bers, while participating in the life of the whole, 
remain forever different from that whole and 
from each other ; if, indeed, it is a spiritual 
unity whose essence, " communicable but not 
divisible," exists whole and entire in each par- 
ticular man, then obviously in history the indi- 
vidual may find a revelation of his nature and 
an intimation of his destiny. History paints 
life on a wide canvas and in a true perspective. 
Through its study man separates what in him- 
self is essential and permanent from that which 
is accidental and transitory; from its drift ho 
learns the direction in which he is tending and 
the ends he blindly seeks ; in its achievement he 
finds the solution of his contradictions, the an- 



52 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

swers to his enigmas, and the vindication of his 
hopes. 

As the general trend of history suggests the 
meaning of each particular life, so its successive 
periods offer illuminating correspondences to 
the ascending stages of individual development. 
Humanity has its inarticulate infancy ; its child- 
hood of dreams and premonitions; its self-as- 
sertive, joyous, aspiring, and speculative youth ; 
its manhood of sober reflection and disciplined 
activity. For the educator, therefore, the study 
of history, and particularly the study of its 
earlier phases, is of prime importance. In the 
childhood of humanity he beholds the magnified 
image of the child with whom he has to deal — an 
image, moreover, which, like a composite photo- 
graph, throws into relief a general type or ideal, 
and thus becomes a standard by which all of its 
individual examples may be measured. The 
manifestations of a particular child may reveal 
an essential truth of human nature, but they 
may also spring from individual defect or per- 
version. To be truly interpreted, they must be 
compared with the revelation of childhood as it 
is writ large upon the pages of history. Only 
very shallow thought ever sets up as a standard 
the individual consciousness, while insight into 
the universal is the kernel of all true philosophy 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 53 

and the practical application of this insight the 
kernel of all wise education. 

All students of Froebel's writings must be 
struck by his repeated allusions to the parallel 
between the development of the individual and 
that of the race. The practical outcome of this 
insight is to be found in that symbolism which, 
though it has long been recognized as the most 
original and most fruitful of his pedagogic inno- 
vations, is, even to-day, the least understood fea- 
ture of the kindergarten games and gifts. Its 
significance will be appreciated only as the sym- 
bolic acts and speech of the child are interpreted 
by the naive symbolism which is the distinctive 
characteristic of thought during the long child- 
hood of mankind. 

While we may hesitate to accept Emerson's 
dictum that "all thinking is analogizing," no 
one can doubt that analogy is the key to the 
mental processes of primitive man. To its in- 
fluence must be ascribed the universal belief of 
savages in the animation of all natural objects. 
Interpreting the world around them through the 
medium of their own sensations, they endow all 
objects with life, feeling, and volition. In their 
conception, sun and moon, clouds and winds, sea 
and mountains are animate beings, whose lives 
may be interpreted by human analogies. The 



5i SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

rainbow is a monster which devours man; the 
waterspout, a cruel giant ; fire, a serpent which 
will sting those who touch it. When a savage is 
wounded by an arrow he punishes it with a fero- 
cious bite ; the fetich which has failed to bring 
him rain he binds, beats, or destroys ; and upon 
the tree from which a relative has fallen he 
revenges himself by cutting it to the ground and 
scattering its chips.* If, reasoning from the 
phenomena of dreams, he concludes that each 
man has a phantom or other self, he believes, for 
the same reason, in the other selves of beasts and 
trees, hatchets and arrows. Therefore, when he 
dies, weapons, food, ornaments, and money are 
buried with him, in order that his phantom self 
may lack none of the things upon which the 
actual self had depended during its earthly life. 

In analogy must be recognized also the power 
which has presided over the development of lan- 
guage. Through analogy, our forefathers, look- 
ing up to the great source of light and heat, 
named it the Sun, or begetter. Through analogy, 
the savage describes his face as moon and his 
cake as sugar cane. Through analogy, names for 
the most various objects have been derived from 
common roots — e. g., " from roots meaning to go 
were formed names for clouds, ivy, serpents, cat- 

* Primitive Culture, E. B. Tylor, p. 286 et seq. 



THE CniLDHOOD OF THE RACE. 55 

tie, and chattel, for movable and immovable prop- 
erty." * Through analogy, all words expressive 
of spiritual ideas have been derived from roots 
which originally had a material meaning. Thus 
the New Guinea savage expresses the idea of 
pity through a word whose primary meaning 
was " to have a stomach-ache " ; f and our own 
word tribulation comes from the tribulum or 
sledge used by the Romans for separating the 
chaff from the wheat. Finally, through analogy, 
primitive men described the phenomena of Na- 
ture in words borrowed from the vocabulary 
of human actions and sentiments, and their 
common speech was largely made up of poetic 
metaphor. Thus, the sun was said to love the 
dawn because he hastens after her, and to kill 
the dawn because the dawn disappears when the 
sun has risen ; clouds were conceived as maidens 
with swans' plumage, and the moon was pictured 
as the sister or bride of the sun, or, again, as a 
rival cleft in twain by the sun because of his 
jealous love for the morning star. Without met- 
aphor, as Professor Max Miiller has pointed out, 
language could not have progressed beyond the 
simplest rudiments, neither could there have 
been any advance in the intellectual life of man. 

* Max Miiller, Science of Language, vol. ii., p. 450. 
f Ibid., p. 438. 



66 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

In the ascription of life and will to all natural 
objects, and in the metaphorical speech of primi- 
tive peoples, many writers claim to have found a 
sufficient explanation of that most characteristic 
phenomenon of the great human childhood, the 
origin and development of myth. By far the 
greater number of myths, moreover, have been 
traced back to anthropomorphic conceptions of 
Day and Night, the Dawn and the Gloaming, 
and to descriptions of their doings, " which ap- 
plied so well to the deeds of human or quasi- 
human beings that in course of time their primi- 
tive purport faded from recollection." * " Let 
but the key be recovered to this mythic dialect," 
and we are promised that " all its complex and 
shifting terms will translate themselves into real- 
ity, and show how far legend in its sympathetic 
fictions of war, love, crime, adventure, fate, is 
only telling the perennial story of the world's 
daily life." f Even assuming this explanation to 
be a satisfactory one, the development of myth 
offers another striking illustration of the ana- 
logical reasoning of primitive men. But the 
more deeply we penetrate into the soul of myth 
the stronger becomes our conviction that neither 
animism nor verbal metaphor are adequate to 

* Myths and Mythmakers, John Fiske, p. 134. 
f E. B. Tylor, Primitive Culture, p. 316. 



THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 57 

account for its origin, but that, on the contrary, 
the impetus which shaped it was man's longing 
for self-knowledge, and that its roots must be 
sought in his premonition of the strange and 
wonderful correspondences which exist between 
the life of Nature and the life of the soul. These 
opposing theories may be tested by a considera- 
tion of the two myths which have been most 
prolific, and, among Aryan peoples at least, have 
become most widely diffused — the myth of the all- 
conquering hero and the myth of the wanderer 
who, through farthest space and beset by deadly 
perils, seeks for a bride whom he has loved and 
lost, or for a treasure of which he has been robbed. 
According to the popular view of mythology, 
the prototype of the countless gods, heroes, and 
knights who overcame monsters of all kinds 
is none other than the mighty Sun, who slays 
the demons of night, storm, winter, and eclipse. 
Back to sun-battles must be traced the conflicts 
of Apollo and the Python, CEdipus and the 
Sphinx, Bellerophon and the Chimsera, Sigurd 
and Fafnir, St. George and the Dragon. The 
rays of the sun are the unerring darts and in- 
vincible weapons with which legend has armed 
its heroes, the originals of Gram, Durandal, and 
Excalibur, of the spear of Achilles, the shafts 
of Odysseus, and the poisoned arrows given by 



58 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Hercules to Philoctetes, and without which Troy 
could not be taken. The flaming eyes and 
streaming golden locks of mythic heroes are but 
a dim reflection of the noonday splendor of their 
heavenly ancestor, and when they come to die it 
is always from causes which point directly to his 
descent into darkness, or his defeat by his great 
enemy, the winter cold. Thus Hercules is con- 
sumed upon a blazing funeral pyre (sunset), 
Sigurd is slain by a thorn (frost), while Arthur 
is received by black-hooded queens into a barge 
"dark as a funeral scarf from stem to stern." 
In like manner mythic descriptions of the love, 
estrangement, and reunion of the Sun and Dawn 
are said to be the creative source of those touch- 
ing legends whose theme is the separation of he- 
roes from the brides whom they wed only to lose. 
The stories of Odysseus journeying homeward 
under grievous perils, and of Orpheus seeking 
Eurydice in Hades, are transfigured accounts of 
the search of the Sun for the Dawn, while the 
beautiful allegory of Psyche is a flower whose 
mythic seed was the search of the Dawn for the 
Sun. Finally, stories like that of the theft and 
recovery of the Golden Fleece are born of poetic 
descriptions of clouds lit up by solar rays, stolen 
by storm fiends or night fiends, and recovered by 
the all-conquering Sun. 



THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 59 

The solar substrate of the myths we have 
been considering is beyond dispute, for their 
lineage has been traced back to primitive stories 
wherein the names of the heroes and heroines 
prove them children of the Sun or the Dawn, 
while the names of their foes betray an ancestry 
of night, cold, and storm. But what of the sun 
myth itself ? Was it nothing more than a poetic 
description of the exploits, the loves, and the suf- 
ferings of the great god of day ? Was there no 
response in man to the conflict between light 
and darkness ? Was there no hero asleep in the 
human soul who started into waking life when 
confronted by his own symbolic image ? — no 
wanderer whose impulse to seek an ideal good 
was stirred by the search of the Sun for the 
Dawn, and the Dawn for the Sun ? In a word, 
was not the sun myth the symbolic expression of 
man's own nature and the prophecy of his his- 
toric career ? 

The current explanation of the solar myth 
fails to account for its vitality and persistence 
after the sun has been transfigured into a human 
hero, whose heavenly ancestry has faded from 
the minds of men. Why do these tales of con- 
quering heroes continue to be told among all 
peoples ? Why do men never tire of the story 
of alienation and return ? Why do literature 



60 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

and art circle forever around these primitive 
themes ? Why do children, the world over, de- 
light in the household tales which repeat under 
countless variations the legends of the hero and 
the wanderer ? These are questions which must 
occur to any thoughtful mind. Their answer is 
to be found in the nature of man as revealed in 
history. To history, therefore, let us turn, dis- 
covering therein, if we may, the originals of the 
hero and the dragon, and the image of that tire- 
less wanderer who always compels our deepest 
sympathy. 

In a cave in France, supposed by geologists to 
be a hundred thousand years old, may be seen the 
oldest extant picture of a man. It represents a 
very small man, naked and defenseless, fleeing in 
terror from an enormous serpent. It is the true 
image of primitive man in his relationship to Na- 
ture, and touches the heart with its vivid expres- 
sion of feebleness and fear. Chased by wild 
beasts, pelted by storms, fevered by tropic suns, 
benumbed by polar frosts, famished with hunger, 
hemmed in by mountains, isolated by seas, shut 
up for companionship to his own tribe, and 
bounded in his experience by the pitiful term of 
his individual life, savage man is the slave of Na- 
ture, which crushes him with its resistless might. 

But in this slave of Nature beats the heart of 



THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 61 

a hero, and he soon turns upon his oppressor. He 
invents the how and arrow, and becomes a terror 
to the wild beasts who had terrified him. He 
erects rude huts to protect himself from cold and 
storm. He domesticates the dog, sheep, horse, 
and cow, and through cultivation transforms 
mere edible grasses into wheat, barley, and rye. 
He drains the marsh, levels the mountain, fer- 
tilizes the desert, and makes the ocean his high- 
way. He spiritualizes the material of Nature in 
the forms of art, and in the light of science sees 
the world not in the isolation of objects but in 
the continuity of process. With the help of steam 
and electricity he conquers space, while with the 
printed page he annihilates time, and thus, roam- 
ing at will over the broad earth and through the 
centuries, he bursts the limits of individuality, 
family, tribe, race, and generation, and expands 
to the measure of the universal life. 

Parallel with man's conquest of Nature is his 
conquest of political and social freedom. Hegel 
has epitomized the teaching of history in the 
pregnant sentence : " The Orient knew, and to the 
present day knows, only that one is free; the Greek 
and Roman world knew that some are free ; the 
German world knows that all are free."* The 

* Hegel's Philosophy of History (Bohn's Philosophical Li- 
brary), p. 110, "German World "'= Modern World. 



62 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

first book of history records the struggle "between 
the despotism of Persia and the newborn spirit 
of freedom in Greece. Subsequent ages have but 
repeated the struggle in fresh and deeper forms, 
with the victory always on the side of freedom. 
The triumph of the Athenians at Marathon, and 
their defeat at Syracuse ; the victory of German 
Hermann over the Roman legions under Varus ; 
the crushing of Attila at Chalons ; the repulse of 
the Saracens at Tours ; the victories of Lutzen, 
Lepanto, Blenheim, Saratoga, "Waterloo, what are 
these but crises in the one great battle of free- 
dom ? — a battle whose roar we may still hear 
around us, and which must go on until the poet's 
dream is realized and 

" battle-flags are furled 
In the Parliament of man, the federation of the world." 

The conquest of Nature and the overthrow of 
political despotisms are but the lesser victories 
of heroic humanity. The wild beast that rages 
within man is more terrible than all those that 
rove the earth ; the chains of ignorance, the 
shackles of sin, are stronger than those of out- 
ward despots ; and fiercer is the battle in the soul 
than any ever fought on land or sea. The true 
hero is he who, within himself as battle-ground, 
meets and slays himself as foo ; and history re- 
ceives its profoundest significance from the fact 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. (53 

that it reveals the ever-deepening ideals by which 
this spiritual conflict has been incited and main- 
tained. The savage knows no law but his own 
caprice, and believes the universe to be capricious. 
Hence his religion is fetichism, and the unformu- 
lated rule of his life to do as he may please. Fol- 
lowing fetichism come the great pantheistic re- 
ligions, which define the infinite as negation of 
the finite, and discipline the uncontrolled natural 
will with the law of self-renunciation. Persia 
advances to the positive thought of a conflict be- 
tween the powers of light and darkness, and chal- 
lenges each man to the help of Ormuzd against 
Ahriman. Judaism declares a just God, who 
loves righteousness and hates iniquity, and in 
the ten commandments defines for all ages the 
binding moral law. Christianity attains the final 
insight that justice can not itself be just unless 
it capacitates for the perfection it requires, re- 
veals a God of grace, and declares the fulfillment 
of all separate commandments in the perfect law 
of love. Thus through the struggle of the ages 
is the arbitrary caprice of the savage transfigured 
into the rational liberty of the man whom the 
truth makes free. 

And now, since the burden of history is man's 
conquest over foes without and foes within, can 
we doubt that the hero in the soul is the proto- 



64: SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

type of all tlie heroes of myth and poetry, and 
that it was his own ideal image which man hailed 
with such fervor in the " Orient conqueror of 
gloomy night " ? This insight explains the per- 
sistence and development of myth after its phys- 
ical substrate has been forgotten. Springing from 
the depths of the spirit, it grew with the growth 
of the soul and unfolded with her unfolding. It 
was, therefore, no "disease of language," but a 
necessary phase of a spiritual process, that phys- 
ical light and darkness should fade into the back- 
ground just in proportion as the morning flush 
of consciousness brightened toward its perfect 
day. 

Myth has been well defined "as an uncon- 
scious act of the popular mind at an early stage 
of society." It is the product not of an individual 
but of a people, and it springs from a source above 
the will and beyond the consciousness of its crea- 
tors. It is, in a word, the dreaming of the generic 
spirit, and therefore prophetic of the career of 
humanity, while, conversely, it can be truly in- 
terpreted only in the light of its historic fulfill- 
ment. Man has defined himself in language as 
"him who thinks" and "him who dies"; in my- 
thology and heroic legend he has defined himself 
as " him who overcomes." 

And not only does man express in myth the 



THE CniLDHOOD OF THE RACE. 65 

ideal which is striving to attain the light of 
consciousness, but the myth, once created, reacts 
upon thought and will, and thus tends to pro- 
duce the hero it portrays. Who shall say how 
far the legends of Hercules and Achilles con- 
tributed to produce heroic Greece ? Who can 
measure the influence of the mythic Thor upon 
the hardy Norseman ? Who shall determine 
how much of practical invention and spiritual 
achievement is still prompted by Boots, Diimm- 
ling, and Jack the Giant-Killer, the nursery he- 
roes of the Norseman, the Teuton, and the Anglo- 
Saxon ? 

As the myth of the hero foreshadows the con- 
quests of the will, so the touching legends of sep- 
aration and reunion adumbrate the history of 
the soul in its spiral ascent to ever higher grades 
of consciousness. The old story-tellers have im- 
agined countless variations of this favor its theme, 
introducing into their tales many complex mo- 
tives and many strange incidents. Of tenest, how- 
ever, the maiden is either forsaken by her lover, 
as in the legends of Ariadne, CEnone, lole, or as 
in the old Hindu myth of Urvasi, and the Greek 
tale of Psyche, the separation is brought about 
by failure to comply with the conditions upon 
which depend the permanence of the union. 
Psyche, a king's daughter, is wedded to Eros, 



66 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

god of love. She may, however, not look upon 
him, but must find her happiness in union with 
the invisible divinity. Enticed by curiosity, she 
gets a lamp and gazes upon the sleeping god, 
who instantly vanishes. The remainder of the 
story relates the weary search of Psyche for her 
lost love, the cruel tasks imposed upon her, her 
misery in estrangement, her reconciliation with 
Eros, her heavenly marriage, and the gift of im- 
mortality which is conferred upon her. 

These stories of separation and reunion state 
in mythic form the most universal fact of human 
experience. For what is life but a process where- 
in the child's happy sense of oneness with Nature, 
man, and God, vanishes in the questions and 
antagonisms of youth, to be found again when 
reason reafl&rms the truths handed down by tra- 
dition, and when duties, which had seemed mere 
arbitrary impositions, are recognized as express- 
ing the inmost being and need of the soul ? And 
again, what is this individual experience but a 
repetition in brief of the historic development of 
consciousness — a movement always conceived as 
pointing backward to a lost Eden or a vanished 
age of gold, while in reality pressing forward 
toward the true paradise which waits for man at 
the goal of aspiration and achievement ? 

While the whole of life may be thus conceived 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 67 

as a circular process, the same movement is mani- 
fested in countless smaller circles recurring upon 
each, higher plane of experience. Thus the infant 
plays at estrangement and reunion in his favor- 
ite game of hide and seek. " Why is it, dear 
mother/' asks Froebel, " that your baby loves to- 
hide his face behind your handkerchief ? He 
might lie unhidden in your arms, on your knee, 
close to your heart, and lying thus see ever your 
eyes looking back into his own. Does he wish 
to conceal himself from you, to be separated from 
you ? God forbid ! He hides himself for the 
happiness of being found, and seeks through 
momentary separation to quicken his feeling of 
union with you." In like manner young chil- 
dren love, themselves, to seek for hidden objects, 
and their delight when search has been rewarded 
by discovery justifies Lord Bacon's saying that 
" according to the innocent play of children the 
divine Majesty took delight to hide his works, to 
the end to have them found out." As childhood 
passes into boyhood, the longing for estrange- 
ment manifests itself in new and deeper forms. 
Familiar surroundings lose their charm, and the 
desire for wandering and adventure is born. A 
longing for the " far off, the strange and the won- 
derful," seizes upon the mind, and the boy plays 
at being a bandit or pirate, an explorer of un- 



68 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

known lands or a hunter in far-away forests. In 
spiritual correspondence with these more exter- 
nal manifestations he asserts his own will against 
that of parents and teachers, and begins to ques- 
tion the wisdom of his elders. Finally, the youth 
attacks the whole existing order of things, and 
thought, intoxicated by a premonition of its own 
absoluteness, insists upon making itself the meas- 
ure of the world. "What signify to the ardent 
youth our social conventions, political dogmas, 
and religious creeds ? Is he not also free ? Does 
he not feel within him a higher law ? Has he 
not in his own reason a criterion of truth ? Away 
with the superstitions of the past, and let rea- 
son create purer manners, a freer government, a 
higher creed ! Thus dreams the young iconoclast, 
and knows not that he is himself the supreme 
idolater. 

To all the circles of individual experience his- 
tory offers recurrent correspondences. Hints of 
the deeper meaning of the youthful longing for 
travel and adventure are given in the restless 
migrations of primitive tribes, in that " urging of 
the spirit outward " manifested in the maritime 
heroes of Spain and Portugal, and resulting in 
the discovery of a new world — in the heroic im- 
pulses which have driven Englishmen across the 
seas and created new Englands in America and 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. C9 

Australia. These external migrations and coloni- 
zations, again, are but types and symbols of the 
dauntless sallies of the soul into its own undis- 
covered realms ; of new continents of the mind 
dawning upon the gaze of the tireless explorer'; 
of spiritual settlement in these fair lands of de- 
sire; of wars between ancestral creeds and the 
deeper impulses stirred by fresh influxes of the 
spirit ; of joy and peace, when in the strange 
beauty of the new revelation is recognized the 
glorified image of loved and familiar truth. The 
age of Socrates in Greece, the age which wit- 
nessed the introduction of Christianity into all 
parts of the Roman Empire, the age of the Ref- 
ormation — are historic examples of the descent 
of Reason into its own depths, and its ascent 
therefrom into a higher consciousness. But the 
world-historic period of estrangement w^as the 
age of the French Revolution, when thought at- 
tacked not this or that political or religious dog- 
ma, but armed itself against the whole content of 
consciousness ; and when man, in the very mo- 
ment of enthroning Reason as mistress of the 
world, threw away the rich heritage she had 
painfully accumulated through the toil of centu- 
ries. By this terrible object lesson the modern 
world has been taught that man is not made, but 
in process of making — that, indeed, human nature 



70 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

exists only as it is created by self -activity, and 
by the participation of each man in the expe- 
rience of all men, and therefore that no political 
folly can be greater than the atomism which de- 
taches the individual from the social whole, and 
breaks the continuity of history by severing the 
links which bind the present to the past. 

These rhythmic undulations, occurring alike 
in the little stream of individual life and the 
mighty river of history, are explained by insight 
into the nature of mind as self-activity. The 
thought of self -activity is the thought of a self- 
producing energy, and mind exists actually only 
in so far as it makes itself to be. On the other 
hand, it always possesses ideally the possibilities 
which it makes actual in the course of its de- 
velopment, and its history is the conversion of 
abstract universality into concrete universality 
by descent into and ascent out of externality 
and manifoldness. All thought presupposes that 
things are thinkable, and latent in this piesuppo- 
sition is the idea of a common reason in the think- 
ing subject and the object of thought. Hence 
thought is both objective and subjective, or, dif- 
ferently stated, thought and thinking, object and 
subject, are one and the same. The movement 
of mind is therefore circular, and its going out 
from itself is at the same time a coming to itself. 



THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 71 

It may help us to follow out tliis rather ob- 
scure lino of thought to consider for a moment 
what is involved in the idea of self-consciousness. 
Self-consciousness is the knowing of the self by 
the self, and this implies both the distinction of 
subject and object and the recognition of their 
identity. He who says " I," separates himself as 
subject thinking from himself as object thought, 
and yet declares that subject and object are one 
and the same. Seen partially, this spiritual pro- 
cess appears to be one of alienation or estrange- 
ment, but when followed throughout its entire 
sweep it is recognized as a circular or rhythmic 
movement, beginning from and returning to it- 
self. 

The circular form of spiritual activity is im- 
plicitly recognized by all world-poets and ex- 
plicitly declared by the greatest philosophers. 
Plato speaks of the soul "turning in herself,'* 
and describes mind as the " sphere of the self- 
moved in voiceless silence turning." Hegel char- 
acterizes the activity of reason as a process of 
" return upon itself." Dante pictures ascending 
degrees of spiritual life by the increasing ve- 
locity of concentric circles of flame. Shake- 
speare portrays the deed as a self-evolving circle 
which returns upon the doer. Goethe shows us 
in the career of Mephistopheles the circular pro- 



72 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

cess througli which the power that always wills 
the bad is made to work the good. Emerson 
calls the circle the highest emblem in the cipher 
of the world, and in several of his mystic poems 
suggests what he elsewhere distinctly states, that 
" the circles of intellect relate to those of the 
heavens " : 

" Nature centers into balls 
And her proud ephemerals, 
Fast to surface and outside, 

Scan the profile of the sphere ; 
Knew they what that signified, 
A new Genesis were here." 

With this insight into the nature of reason 
we are able to explain fully the origin of sun 
myths. I have tried to show that the many 
legends of heroes and wanderers adumbrate the 
historic career of humanity, and have their source 
in the soul's prophetic anticipation of its own 
nature and destiny. But long before men were 
able to create such tales as these their wonder 
was excited by those alternations of light and 
darkness which correspond to the pulsations of 
consciousness. Hence, sun myths, when studied 
historically, show clear traces of spiritual ascent. 
In their primitive stage of development, as Mr. 
Fiske has pointed out, " they are little more than 
direct copies of natural phenomena, just as imita- 
tive words are direct copies of natural sounds." 



THE CHILDHOOD OP THE RACE. 73 

Tlius savage mythology lias mucli to tell of sun- 
devouring jaguars, dogs, fishes, and serpents, and 
European folk-lore preserves reminiscences of 
such archaic myths in the stories of Little Red 
Riding-hood, of Tom Thumb who emerges un- 
harmed from the stomach of a cow, and of the 
seven little kids so ingeniously released from the 
body of a sleeping wolf. Tales such as these, 
while they point clearly to the sun who is swal- 
lowed and again disgorged by night, storm, and 
eclipse, show little of the transforming power 
of imagination. But in the myths of hero and 
wanderer, as well as in legends like that of Sisy- 
phus with his recoiling stone, and Ixion bound 
for his sin upon a revolving wheel of flame, it is 
clear that brute fact has been freighted with 
spirit, and that Reason has learned to recognize 
her own image in the symbols of Nature.* 

* Those of my readers who are familiar with the writings of 
Dr. Harris will recognize that I have repeated very imperfectly 
his explanation of the origin of sun myths. For the benefit of 
those who may not have seen this explanation I herewith give 
it in full, hoping it may prove as great a revelation to them as 
it has been to me : 

" Consciousness is the knowing of the self by the self. There 
is subject and object and the activity of recognition. From 
subject to object there is distinction and difference, but with 
recognition sameness or identity is perceived, and the distinc- 
tion or difference is retracted. What is this simple rhythm but 
regularity ? It is, we answer, regularity, but it is mucli more 
than this. But the child or savage delights in monotonous 



Y4 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

I have dwelt at sucli length upon sun myths 
and their spiritual interpretation because the 
study of these myths has made me realize, as I 
never did before, that through the exercise of 

repetition, not possessing the slightest insight into the cause of 
his delight. His delight is, however, explicable through this 
fact of the identity in form between the rhythm of his soul- 
activity and the sense-perception by which he perceives regu- 
larity. 

" The sun myth arises through the same feeling. Wherever 
there is repetition, especially in the form of return to itself, 
there comes this conscious or unconscious satisfaction at behold- 
ing it. Hence, especially circular movement, or movement in 
cycles, is the most wonderful of all the phenomena beheld by 
primitive man. Nature presents to his observation infinite dif- 
ferences. Out of the confused mass he traces some forms of 
recurrence — day and night, the phases of the moon, the seasons 
of the year, genus and species in animals and plants, the ap- 
parent revolutions of the fixed stars, and the orbits of planets. 
These phenomena furnish him symbols or types in which to 
express his ideas concerning the divine principle that he feels 
to be First Cause. To the materialistic student of sociology all- 
religions are merely transfigured sun myths. But to the deeper 
student of psychology it becomes clear that the sun myth itself 
rests on the perception of identity between regular cycles and 
the rhythm which characterizes the activity of self-conscious- 
ness. And self-consciousness is felt and seen to be a form of 
being not on a par with mere transient individual existence, 
but the essential attribute of the Divine Being, Author of all." 
— Introduction to the Study of Philosophy, pp. 190, 191. 

In connection with Dr. Harris's explanation of the sun myth, 
it is interesting to recall Eckermann's account of Goethe's feel- 
ing for the sun : 

" Sunday, December 21, 1823. Goethe's good humor was again 
brilliant to-day. We have reached the shortest day ; and the 
hope that with each succeeding week wo shall see a consider- 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE RACE. 75 

phantasy the soul begins its emancipation from 
the thralldom of sense. Just as " truth embodied 
in a tale shall enter in at lowly doors," so from 
the opening doors of the soul issued that long 
train of myths, legends, fables, and parables 
which prepared the way for the poetry of Homer 
and the philosophy of Plato. If, however, other 
proof is needed of the fact that through symbolic 
expression the mind rises above symbols, it may 
be found abundantly in the history of art. What 
are the earliest musical instruments ? Gongs, 
triangles, cymbals, jawbones, rattles, and other 
percussive instruments, whose sole purpose is to 
accentuate rhythmic intervals of time. What 
are man's first ornaments ? Strings of beads 
around the neck, rows of fringes on the garments, 
and regular figures tattooed upon the face and 
body. What are the first products of architec- 
ture ? Vast monotonous monuments, which sug- 
gest nothing but the ceaseless piling of stone 

able increase in the days, appears to have exerted a favorable 
effect on his spirits, ' To-day we celebrate the regeneration of 
the sun ! ' exclaimed he, joyfully as I entered his room this 
morning. I hear that it is his custom every year to pass the 
weeks before the shortest day in a most melancholy frame of 
mind— to sigh them away, in fact."— (xoethes Conversations \vith 
Ecliermann, Bohn's Standard Library, p. 46- 

What the regeneration of the sun meant to Goethe may be 
learned from the Easterday in Faust. (See Bayard Taylor's 
translation, pp. 27-35.) 
7 



76 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

upon stone. How does poetry make its first ap- 
pearance among men ? In the form of mere 
metrical chants and refrains. How do savages 
and barbarians express love, hate, joy, and sor- 
row ? By rude dances or regularly repeated 
leaps and yells. What do these several phenom- 
ena indicate ? Surely the naive effort of Rea- 
son to express its own form of return, and thus 
interpret itself to itself. 

With advancing consciousness art rises into 
a higher symbolism and produces monuments 
which still excite the wonder of the world. This 
higher symbolism finds its most complete expres- 
sion in Egypt, where, under the concrete form of 
life, death, and resurrection, the idea of aliena- 
tion and return becomes the basis of religion. 
This idea builds the pyramids, gives birth to the 
phcenix eternally consuming itself yet forever 
rising again out of its ashes, carves the statue of 
Memnon, and creates the Sphinx. In the Sphinx, 
symbolic art, properly so called, reaches its high- 
est expression. " The human head looking out 
from the brute body," says Hegel, "exhibits spirit 
as it begins to emerge from the merely natural, 
to tear itself loose therefrom and already to look 
more freely around it." The soul has begun to 
question itself with regard to its own origin, na- 
ture, and destiny. These questions, once pro- 



THE CHILDHOOD OF THE KACE. 77- 

pounded, the business of all subsequent ages is 
to find their answer. Hence, in the Classical 
Walpurgis Night, Goethe makes the Sphinxes 
say of themselves : 

" We sit beside the Pyramids 

For the judgment of the races. 
Inundation, war, and peace, 
With eternal changless faces." 

We have glanced at the naive symbolism 
through which primitive man projected his own 
life and feeling into inanimate objects ; at the 
symbolism of language, the symbolism of myth, 
and the symbolism of art. In the next chapter 
we shall consider the animism of little children, 
their love of analogy, their symbolic play, their 
response to the symbolism of Nature, and their 
delight in those household tales wherein are en- 
shrined the mythic conceptions of childlike men. 
If it shall finally appear that alike in the indi- 
vidual and the race childhood is wrapped about 
with the atmosphere of poetic symbolism, we 
shall, I hope, be prepared to recognize the sig- 
nificance of Froebel's " most original innovation 
in education," and to study with open minds the 
symbolism of the kindergarten games and gifts. 



IV. 

THE SYMBOLISM OF CKILDHOOD. 



" My heart leaps up when I behold 

A rainbow in the sky ; 
So was it when my life began; 
So is it now I am a man ; 
So be it when 1 shall grow old, 

Or let me die ! 
The child is father of the man ; 
And I could wish my days to bo 
Bound each to each by natural piety." 

/ — WoKDSWOBTH, 

" Oh ! give us once again the wishing cap 
Of Fortunatus, and the invisible coat 
Of Jack the Giant-Killer, Robin Hood, 
And Sabra in the forest with St. George 1 
The child whose love is here, at least, doth reap 
One precious gain, that he forgets himself." 

— The Prelude, Wordsworth. 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 

Whoever has observed tlie manner in wliich 
little children use words will be ready to admit 
that the young human being begins to analo- 
gize almost as soon as he begins to be. Prof. 
Preyer records of his boy that before he was able 
to articulate any words other than the primitive 
syllables mamma, papa, atfa, etc., he had formed 
the habit of saying atta when carried from the 
house for his daily outing. In his eleventh 
month, when the bright light of a lamp was soft- 
ened by putting a shade over it, he broke into the 
same exclamation, thus showing that he had dis- 
covered similarity in the very different phenom- 
ena of leaving the house and dimming a light. 
Later, the same word atta was used to denote the 
closing of a fan and the emptying of a glass, and 
was repeatedly uttered with an expression of ter- 
ror during a railway journey, when the child's 
fears were probably excited by the rapidity with 
which objects vanished from view. By the twen- 



82 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

tieth montli aita had acquired the general sense 
of going or gone, while in contrast with this con- 
cept the ideas of coming, shooting forth, emerg- 
ing, were expressed by the monosyllable da or 
ta. Thus, if the father covered his head and let 
the child uncover it, the little one would laugh 
loudly and say " Da " ; while if his father left the 
room he would utter softly the word atta, modi- 
fying it into hata if he wished to be taken out 
himself. 

Here are other examples of infant analogizing : 
" A child saw and heard a duck on the water, and 
said quack. Thereafter he called, on the one 
hand, all birds and insects, on the other hand, all 
liquids quack. Finally he called all coins quack, 
after having seen an eagle on a French sou. . . . 
Another child, a boy twenty-one months old, 
applied the joyous outcry ei, modifying it into 
eiz, into aze, and then into ass, to his wooden 
goat on wheels and covered with a rough hide; 
eiz, then became exclusively a cry of joy; ass, the 
name for everything that moved along — e. g., for 
animals, for his own sister, for a wagon ; then for 
everything that moved at all ; finally, for every- 
thing that had a rough surface." * Illustrations 
of this kind might be indefinitely multiplied. Say 
to the child one day that you wish to unbutton 

* The Developmeut of the Intellect, W. Preyer, p. 93. 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 83 

his coat, and on the next he asks you to unbutton 
a nut. Speak before him of the roof of the house, 
and soon after he surprises you by saying that 
his teeth-roof aches, when he has a pain in his 
palate.* Teach him that the blue arch overhead 
is called the sky, and he calls the ceiling and the 
top of the piano, sky also. Let him learn the word 
door, and soon you find him extending it to boxes 
and books, coffee-pots and umbrellas. After some 
"wonder, and perhaps a little misgiving, you dis- 
cover that the tie which binds together these va- 
rious objects in his mind is the simple fact that 
they all open and shut. The lesson of these facts 
is that the infant mind is transparent to resem- 
blance but opaque to difference. The child seizes 
each object of perception in some single aspect, 
and his thought of it is partial and fragmentary. 
But the veriest fragment of thought is implicitly 
recognized as universal, and hence the word de- 
noting it is unhesitatingly applied to all objects 
in which the child recognizes the mark or attri- 
bute which had originally attracted his attention. 
The greatest errors in teaching arise from the 
neglect of this psychological fact, and the en- 
deavor to force the young mind away from the 
similitudes in which it delights by exciting a pre- 
mature activity of distinction. 

* The Development of the Intellect, W. Preyer, p. 95. 



84 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

It may not be irrelevant, as showing the power 
of analogy over the mind of children, to call at- 
tention to their tendency to find in similarities of 
sound indication of similarity of sense. The fol- 
lowing examples are cited from an article by Dr. 
G. Stanley Hall : " Children hear fancied words 
in noises and sounds of nature and animals, and 
are persistent punners — as butterflies make but- 
ter, or eat it, or give it by squeezing, so grasshop- 
pers give grass, bees give beads and beans, kittens 
grow on the pussy-willow, all honey is made from 
honeysuckles, and even a poplin dress is made of 
poplar trees. When the cow lows, it somehow 
blows its own horn ; crows and scarecrows are 
confounded ; ant has some subtle relationship to 
aunt ; angleworm suggests angle, or triangle, or 
ankle ; Martie eats " tomarties " ; a holiday is a 
day to " holler " on ; Harry O'Neil is nicknamed 
Harry Oatmeal; isosceles is somehow related 
to sausages ; October suggests knocked-over." * 
Doubtless in many of these expressions the chil- 
dren were merely " playing with words," but oth- 
ers seem to indicate mental confusion, and it is 
undeniable that the reaction of fantastic analo- 
gies between the sounds of words often produces 
distortion of thought. A little attention on the 
part of kindergartners to the sense in which 

* Contents of Children's Minds, G. Stanley Hall. 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 85 

their young charges use words would be of incal- 
culable benefit to the children themselves, and 
would throw much light on the workings of their 
minds. 

In his play no less than in his speech the 
child reveals the analogical activity of his mind. 
It has often been observed that little girls will 
turn with indifference from dolls which are 
triumphs of the toyman's art to lavish caresses 
upon a towel rolled into the shape of a cylinder, 
or even, as in the case narrated by Richter, upon 
a shabby bootjack. So the boy finds more 
charm in his father's cane than in his own hob- 
by-horse. These preferences are explained by 
the fact that a toy is only a symbol, whereas it is 
the spiritual reality which the symbol suggests 
that allures the imagination. What the girl de- 
mands of her doll is the quickening of maternal 
love in her heart. What the boy craves of his 
horse is that it shall waken a presentiment of his 
own power over nature. The too perfect toy 
chills the imagination, and hence the child turns 
from it to objects which by remotely suggesting 
an ideal heighten the activity of fantasy. The 
true plaything is only "a distaff of flax from 
which the soul spins a many-colored coat." It 
must be indefinite, capable of many transforma- 
tions and able to act many parts. Only thus can 



86 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

it fulfill its twofold mission — to stimulate crea- 
tive activity and satisfy tlie hunger of the soul 
for the ideal. 

" It is a matter of surprise to some," writes 
Mme. de Saussure, "that children are satisfied 
with the rudest imitations. They are looked 
down upon for their want of feeling for art, 
while they should ratlier be admired for the force 
of imagination which renders such illusion pos- 
sible. Mold a lump of wax into a figure or cut 
one out of paper, and, provided it has something 
like legs and arms and a rounded piece for a 
head, it will be a man in the eyes of the child. 
This man will last for weeks ; the loss of a limb 
or two will make no difference ; and he will fill 
every part you choose to make him play. The 
child does not see the imperfect copy, but only 
the model in his own mind. The wax figure is to 
him only a symbol on which he does not dwell. 
No matter though the symbol be ill chosen and 
insignificant ; the young spirit penetrates the 
veil, arrives at the thing itself, and contemplates 
it in its true aspect. Too exact imitations of 
things undergo the fate of the things themselves, 
of which the child soon tires. He admires them, 
is delighted with them, but his imagination is 
impeded by the exactness of their forms, which 
represent one thing only ; and how is he to be 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 87 

contented with one amusement ? A toy soldier 
fully equipped is only a soldier ; it can not repre- 
sent his father or any other personage. It would 
seem as if the young mind felt its originality 
more strongly when, under the inspiration of the 
moment, it puts all things in requisition, and 
sees, in everything around, the instruments of its 
pleasure. A stool turned over is a boat, a car- 
riage ; set on its legs it becomes a horse or a 
table ; a bandbox becomes a house, a cupboard, a 
wagon — anything. You should enter into his 
ideas, and, even before the time for useful toys, 
should provide the child with the means of con- 
structing for himself, rather than with things 
ready made." * It is superfluous to suggest to 
any one familiar with the kindergarten how per- 
fectly this ideal of play material is realized in 
the Froebel gifts. 

As analogy rules the child's speech and con- 
trols his play, so it determines his views of the 
world. Like primitive man, he imputes what- 
ever he feels within him to the objects around 
him, and in his thought all things live, move, 
feel, hear, and speak. Tiedemann, the first sci- 
entific student of infancy, relates that when a 
watch was held close to the ear of his baby son, 

* Mine. Necker de Saussure, cited in Rosmini's Method in 
Education (Grey), pp. 3-10, 341. 



88 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

the child, noticing its ticking, exclaimed that 
Fripon, a little dog, was shut up in it. So when 
the boy did not see the sun in the sky, he said : 
" It has gone to bed ; to-morrow it will get up 
and drink tea and eat a piece of bread and 
butter." * Professor Preyer records of his boy, 
that when dolls were cut out of paper in his 
presence, the child would weep violently for fear 
that in the cutting a head might be taken off 
also ; that if a biscuit were divided before him 
he would exclaim with a look of pity, " Poor 
biscuit ! " while the words " poor wood " were 
uttered sorrowfully whenever he saw a stick of 
wood thrown in the stove, f " The child," says 
Richter, "finds nothing lifeless without any 
more than within himself ; he si^reads his soul 
as a universal soul over everything." Hence he 
says: "The lights have covered themselves up 
and gone to bed. The spring has dressed itself. 
The wind dances. I kiss my hand to the spring. 
Is the moon good ? and does it never cry ? " J 

It is important in this connection to remem- 
ber that the feeling that all things are animated 



* Tiedemann's Record of Infant Life, English version of the 
French translation and Commentary by Bernard Perez, with 
notes by F. Louis Soldan. 

f Development of the Intellect, p. 161. 

X Levana, Bohn's Standard Library, pp. 154, 339. 



.THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 89 

by personal will and consciousness maintains 
itself long after the belief in universal vitality 
has vanished. Thus a little girl thirteen years 
old confides to me that though she has known 
for a long time that stones and trees and flowers 
are not like people, yet she always feels as if they 
were ; therefore she never leaves a single flower 
on a bush, for fear it may be lonesome; if she 
gathers autumn leaves from the maple, she makes 
it a point to take some also from the neigh- 
boring oak lest she should arouse envy and in- 
spire a quarrel ; and when she has thoughtlessly 
kicked a stone out of its place in the road, her 
conscience pricks her, and she can not keep down 
the feeling that she ought to put it back so that 
it may not be homesick. Victor Hugo's little 
Cosette picturing to herself " that something is 
somebody " is the type of childhood the world 
over. 

The child's belief that all objects have life 
and feeling condemns the practice of those who 
seek to please and comfort him by beating the 
stool over which he has stumbled, and saying 
" Naughty fire ! " to the flame in which he has 
burned his hand. Children are all too ready to 
blame something or somebody for what is the 
result of their own ignorance or carelessness, and 
we can not begin too early to cultivate the op- 



90 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

posite habit of fair and kindly judgment. No 
mother, therefore, should allow her child to treat 
even a chair or stick in a way she would be un- 
willing to have him treat a human being. He 
believes in universal life; hence he should be 
taught to show universal kindness. 

In ascribing to inanimate objects the life he 
feels within himself the child takes the first step 
in mythology. The second follows when by 
analogical inference from the relationship be- 
tween his own inner and outer life he explains 
the course and change of nature as the work 
of active though invisible spirits. Some years 
ago, under the direction of Dr. G. Stanley Hall, 
an attempt was made in Boston to obtain, 
through a carefully chosen list of questions, an 
inventory of the contents of the minds of chil- 
dren of average intelligence on entering the 
primary schools of that city.* One of the most 
interesting results of this investigation was the 
light cast upon the animism of little children ; 
another was the abundant proof yielded of the 
fact that their imagination, like that of primi- 
tive men, receives its most powerful impetus 
irom the phenomena of the heavens. Out of the 
large number of children questioned, fortj^-eight 

* Children are admitted to the primary schools of Boston at 
five years of age. 



THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 91 

per cent thought that at night "the sun goes, 
rolls or flies, or is blown or walks, or that God 
pulls it up higher out of sight. He takes it into 
heaven, and perhaps puts it to bed, and even talces 
off its clothes, and puts them on in the morning ; 
or, again, it lies under the trees, where the an- 
gels mind it. ... So the moon [still italicizing 
where the exact words of the children are given] 
comes around when it is a bright night and peo- 
ple want to walk or forget to light some lamps, 
it follows us about, and has nose and eyes, while 
it calls the stars into or under or behind it at 
night, and they may be made of bits of it. . . . 
Thunder, which some anthropologists tell us is 
or represents the highest God to most savage 
races, was apperceived as God groaning, or kick- 
ing, or rolling barrels about, grinding snow, walk- 
ing loud, breaking something, hitting the clouds," 
etc. Lightning was explained as " God putting 
out his finger, or opening a door, turning a gas 
quick, or [very common] striking many matches 
at once, throwing stones and iron for sparks, 
setting paper afire, or light going inside and out- 
side the sky, or stars falling ! . . . Finally, God 
himself was conceived as a big, perhaps a blue 
man very often seen in the sky or in clouds, 
in the church, and even in the street ; was said 
to live in a big palace, or in a big brick or stone 



92 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

house in the sky, to look like the priest, Froebel, 
papa ; to make lamps, babies, dogs, trees, money, 
etc., and to have the angels work for him." * 

Fancies such as these result, no doubt, from a 
blending of the child's spontaneity with impres- 
sions received from external sources. It must, 
however, be remembered that the mind's own 
attractive and repellent power determines the in- 
fluence it receives from without, and hence the 
impressions voluntarily entertained by little chil- 
dren show to what ideas they are accessible. 
Thus children learn from older persons about 
God and angels, but they cast these ideas into 
molds of their own fashioning, and the illustra- 
tions above given prove beyond dispute how fil- 
ially they reproduce that mythic stage of human 
experience which explained all the phenomena 
of nature as the work of human beings or beings 
akin to man. 

Closely connected with the animism of chil- 
dren is their proneness to impute to physical 
objects a power for good or ill over their lives. 
What they wish " on a black and white horse," 
or looking over the left shoulder at the new 
moon, is sure to be granted ; the breaking of a 
mirror foretells disaster, pearls bring tears, and 
a dream of the loss of a tooth is the prophecy of 

* The Contents of Children's Minds, G. Stanley Hall. 



THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 93 

tlie death of a friend. Doubtless cliildren learn 
these superstitions from thoughtless or ignorant 
persons; but unless there was something in the 
mind that responded to them they would be re- 
jected or quickly forgotten. Moreover, they be- 
long to the childhood of the race as well as to 
the childhood of the individual, and even in 
times which may be called recent the great ma- 
jority of men heard oracles in the rustle of 
leaves, saw omens in the flight of birds, and be- 
lieved in dreams as prophecies of impending 
events. 

One of the cardinal maxims of pedagogic sci- 
ence is that the educator should discover and 
conform to the mind's own process of develop- 
ment. Such marked facts as those we have been 
considering may not, therefore, be safely ignored. 
Learning the truth that underlies them, and the 
needs they indicate, we shall be able so to guide 
the children that in their young lives the mythic 
age of a nobler humanity may be born; or, to 
quote the words of Froebel, " we shall revive in 
childhood the legendary period of human his- 
tory, with its dross cleansed, its darkness illu- 
mined, its aims and ideals purified." 

What, then, are the lessons to be learned from 
childish animism and superstition ? Surely, the 
former hints the soul's premonition of the fact 



94 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

tliat all true being is spiritual being — that there 
are and can be no real forces which are not derived 
ultimately from the forces of the mind. Surely, 
the latter is rooted in a deep though unconscious 
presentiment of the manifold correspondences 
between the life of nature and the life of the 
spirit. Surely, education should take account of 
both these great truths, and, by presenting them 
to the child in forms that appeal to his sympathy 
and imagination, aid his effort to break the 
chains of sense. Those of my readers who are 
familiar with the writings of Froebel will rec- 
ognize in this brief statement an echo of his 
thoughts, and a key to much of the symbolism 
of the kindergarten games and gifts. 

As the power of imagination expands, the 
child finds an inexhaustible fountain of joy in 
those wonderful fairy tales which prefigure the 
conquest of man over nature and over himself, 
and picture in symbolic forms the free energy of 
spirit. The hero of fairyland is beautiful, irre- 
sistible, invincible. A wonderful belt or a still 
more wonderful ointment has made him so strong 
that he can uproot mountains and fling them 
about like pebbles. He possesses an arrow which 
never misses its aim, a trumpet at whose blast the 
strongest walls fall to the ground, and a sword 
to which he has only to say " Heads off ! " when 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 95 

all his enemies fall dead at his feet. Seven- 
league boots, a magic carpet, a wonderful saddle, 
or a wishing ring give him the freedom of space, 
and time exists not for one who can summon at 
will genii, dwarfs, and elves to do in a single 
night the work of a lifetime. He is the owner of 
a table which upon being commanded to cover 
itself is straightway loaded with the choicest 
dainties, a tap which freely pours out the best of 
mead and wine, scissors which of themselves cut 
out of the air all manner of fine garments, an 
axe which, needing no man to direct its blows, 
hews down the densest forests, and a self-mov- 
ing spade which tirelessly digs and delves, and 
makes earth and rock fly out in splinters. Add 
to these possessions a wand which points the way 
to hidden treasures, a fruit which cures all dis- 
eases, a salve which heals all wounds, a glass 
wherein may be seen at will all that is going on 
in any and every part of the world, and a cloak 
which makes invisible its all-seeing owner, and 
we may consider our hero fairly equipped. With 
him, stones, trees, and animals are in league. Is 
there a secret he needs or longs to know ? The 
stone which lies at the foot of his bed can tell 
him all things, even declaring to him whether 
the maiden he would wed is as she should be — 
pure and bright as the noonday sun. Has he in 



96 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

a moment of inadvertence been blinded by a 
wicked enemy ? Straightway the lime tree whis- 
pers that he need only rub his eyes with the dew 
on her leaves and they will be as good as ever. 
Has a traitor cut off his head while he slept ? 
This is a trivial accident, for the hare whom he 
has befriended knows of a root which will make 
body and head grow together again. Must he 
find the heart of a giant hidden in an egg, which 
in turn is safely housed in the body of a duck 
who swims on a well within a church built on a 
far-away island ? Let him not doubt or hesitate, 
for a grateful wolf shall carry him to the island, 
a grateful raven procure the otherwise unpro- 
curable church keys, and the egg dropped into 
the bottom of the well shall be brought up safe 
and sound by a grateful salmon. 

Such is the hero of our childhood — a hero 
whose lineaments we learn later to recognize in 
the world of reality. For is he not the man of 
the Gatling gun and the nitroglycerin bomb — 
the possessor of the steam plow, the steamship, 
the locomotive, and the telegraph — the man of 
science with whom all nature conspires — the in- 
dividual member of that great whole civil soci- 
ety, who multiplies his own power by the power 
of all other men, whose table is covered with the 
products of every clime, and who reads in his 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 97 

morning paper the news of the world ? The im- 
age of this hero haunts and satisfies the imagina- 
tion of the child, because it is the image of his 
ideal self. We have seen how, through an un- 
conscious process of analogy, he projects his 
soul into inanimate objects ; in like manner the 
unfading charm of fairy tales is explained by 
the mind's presentiment of their correspondence 
with its own ideal nature and destiny. 

Turning our gaze from the hero to his deeds, 
we find that his life seems mainly devoted to the 
rescue of beautiful maidens who are generally 
princesses. Sometimes the maiden is in the pow- 
er of a wicked stepmother or witch; sometimes 
she wanders bewildered through a gloomy forest ; 
sometimes she lies in enchanted sleep ; sometimes 
she stands fixed in the earth with only her head 
visible ; sometimes by the devices of a wicked 
magician her face seems full of wrinkles and all 
her features are awry, though in a mirror which 
she holds her original beauty may still be seen ; 
oftenest she has been carried off by giant or 
dragon and hidden in a castle under the sea, on 
top of a glass mountain, or within the bowels of 
the earth. No matter where she is, the hero finds 
her • no matter how she is deformed, he recog- 
nizes her. Up the glass mountain he rides, 
through the unyielding forest he penetrates ; he 



98 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

slays the fire-breathing dragon, cuts off the giant's 
multifarious heads, casts the wicked witch into a 
pit of serpents, and finds the crystal ball which 
destroys the power of the magician and restores 
to the disfigured princess the beauty which had 
been the wonder of the world. 

And now, must we not ask ourselves, who is 
this princess so beset by evil powers, so triumph- 
ant over them ? Does her history find no paral- 
lel in our own experience ? Have ive never felt 
the power of the witch, the giant, and the dragon ? 
Have we never lain in enchanted sleep ? never 
beaten against the strong bars of a prison ? never 
gazed in the mirror of the ideal and wept over 
our own deformity ? In a word, must we not 
recognize in the princess an image of the human 
soul shut up in the castle of sense, its ideals 
dormant, its energies unaroused ; or, again, dis- 
figured by evil, and a victim alike to giants of 
ignorance and dragons of sin ? 

It is true that the representations of giant, 
stepmother, and dragon seem often to indicate 
external rather than internal foes, but this only 
shows the depth of feeling out of which these 
conceptions sprang. There are wild forces in 
nature as well as in the human heart, giants of 
frost and heat, swamp and desert, poverty and 
disease. There is evil in the world which must 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 99 

be cast out unless she is to remain forever the 
stepmother of the soul. The regeneration of the 
individual involves that of nature and of soci- 
ety, and our latest "world-poet has taught us that 
not until man has created a world of freedom 
can he himself be free. Standing on land which 
he has rescued from the sea, and among a people 
in whom he has created his own image, Faust 
hails the passing moment, "Ah, still delay, thou 
art so fair ! " and thus, literally losing his wager 
with Mephistopheles, wins in very truth the final 
triumph over him. 

Humanity conquering and redeeming — hu- 
manity emancipated and redeemed — such are the 
ideals which hover before us in the images of the 
hero and the princess. The picture, it is true, is 
indefinite, but life and experience deepen its out- 
line, work in the needed light and shade, and 
give it concreteness. Thus do these primitive 
conceptions adapt themselves to every stage of 
spiritual development and resemble those mythic 
garments which grew with the growth of their 
possessor, and fitted him equally well as infant 
and as man. 

As the simple heart of humanity has treas- 
ured the image of the hero, so also has it en- 
shrined that of the wanderer, and it is estimated 
that about four-fifths of the folk-lore of northern 



100 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Europe is made up of stories of alienation and 
return. Cinderella vanishing from the disconso- 
late prince but leaving him the slipper through 
which he may find and claim her as his bride, is 
one of the most familiar and most beautiful tales 
of this class. The myth of Psyche is told over 
again in the German story of the Soaring Lark, 
in the Gaelic tale of the Lady of the Sky, in the 
modern Hindu Story of Gandharba-Sena, and in 
the beautiful Norse tale East o' the Sun and 
West o' the Moon. It is also the mythic sub- 
strate of our own nursery story. Beauty and the 
Beast. In all these tales, after sorrow comes joy, 
and through estrangement is brought about a 
deeper union. But there are others, such as the 
Story of the Third Royal Mendicant in the 
Arabian Nights, where the hero is left in his 
estrangement, and we are made to feel the agony 
of a forfeited happiness. Finally, in such tales as 
the Woodcutter's Child (Grimm) and The Lassie 
and her Godmother (Dasent's Norse Tales) the 
spiritual meaning of the myth becomes apparent, 
and we recognize that we are reading another 
version of the story of Eden, the fall and the 
reconciliation. 

The great merit of fairy tales is that they en- 
rich the imagination with the forms into which 
all human experience is cast. " The power that 



THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 101 

has scarcely germinated in the boy's mind," says 
Froebel, " is seen by him in the legend or tale, a 
perfect plant filled with the most delicious blos- 
soms and fruits. The very remoteness of the 
comijarison with his oivn vague hopes expands 
heart and soul, strengthens the mind, unfolds life 
in freedom and power." * 

I have illustrated, in perhaps tedious detail, 
the sway of analogy over childish minds, because, 
though the fact is familiar, the educational hint 
it conveys is too generally neglected. This neg- 
lect explains the failure of many of Froebel's 
disciples to enter into and apply his ideas with 
regard to symbolism. For what is a symbol but 
a natural object, action or event which is ana- 
logically related to some spiritual fact or process ? 
And what is the symbolism of the kindergarten, 
but an endeavor through the use of typical facts 
and poetic analogies to stir the child with far- 
away presentiments of his ideal nature, his spir- 
itual relationships and his divine destiny ? 

The symbolism of the kindergarten has two 
distinct phases. The first and simpler phase is 
that wherein, through plays representing the 
typical activities of Nature and of man and the 
typical relationships of the individual to Nature 
and to man, there is insinuated into the child's 

* Education of Man, translation by W, N. Hailmann. 



102 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

mind a sort of Ariadne clew to the labyrinth of 
experience, and he is prepared to master instead 
of being mastered by the infinitude of particular 
objects and events. As illustrations of this phase 
of symbolism may be mentioned such games as 
The Barn- Yard Gate and The Little Gardener, 
which hint the responsibility of the superior to 
the inferior life; all the plays which portray 
family relationships and duties; the games of 
the farmer, miller, baker, etc., which picture in 
symbolic form the dependence of the individual 
upon the organized labor of civil society ; the 
soldier plays which adumbrate his relationship 
to the state ; and the song of the Church Door 
and Window, wherein a hint is given the child 
of the deeper meaning of that sense of com- 
munity which attracts him to all crowds and 
assemblages of men, and fills him with the desire 
to share their thought and aspiration. Within 
this class of symbolic representations fall also 
those endless exercises with the gifts and occupa- 
tions which foreshadow the principle of organic 
unity, and illustrate the process of development. 
( The aim of these exercises is to quicken a pre- 
dictive sense of the tie which binds the indi- 
vidual to the social whole, and to hint the filial 
and ancestral character of each object and event. 
Thus the sequences which the child builds, as 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 103 

well as the sequence of the kindergarten gifts, 
point on the one hand to physical evolution, 
wherein each form " remembers the next inferior 
and predicts the next higher/' and on the other to 
the process of historic development, which mag- 
nifies the present by linking it with the past and 
the future. 

The second phase of kindergarten symbolism 
deals rather with poetic correspondences than 
with typical facts, and is grounded in the in- 
sight that all spiritual truths have their mate- 
rial analogues. To this class of symbols belong, 
among others, the play of the Bird's Nest, which 
makes objective to the child his own relationship 
to his mother ; the game of the forth-flying and 
home-returning pigeons, wherein the child be- 
holds as in a mirror his own outgoings and in- 
comings ; the songs which deal with the analogies 
between physical and spiritual light ; the play of 
the bridge, which is a symbolic picture of the 
reconciliation of contrasts ; the plays of the dart- 
ing fish and the soaring bird, which seek to 
deepen the presentiment of spiritual freedom 
stirred by the sight of these types of unimpeded 
activity in a pure element. But the most strik- 
ing example of this aspect of symbolism is to be 
found in the development of the kindergarten 
gifts through which Froebel aims at nothing less 



104 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

than to put into the hands of the child the poetic 
key to Nature. This attempt will hereafter be 
considered in detail, but for the present I must 
restrict myself to reminding the reader of Froe- 
bel's belief that the nature of mind is the law of 
the Cosmos, and to the general statement that in 
his gifts he endeavors to set forth as in a parable 
that ideal of man as Qliedganzes which was the 
creative source of his entire educational work. 

Is symbolic education original with Froebel ? 
I think not. He learned it from the prattle and 
play of the child. He learned it from the child- 
hood of the race. He learned it from simple- 
hearted mothers as they played with their babies 
games like Pat-a-cake and the Little Pig that went 
to Market. He learned it from kindly grand- 
mothers who, sitting by bright winter fires, re- 
lated to wide-eyed auditors the wonderful adven- 
tures of Thumbling, or the sorrows of Maid-Ma- 
leen. He learned it from the poets whose tropes 
and metaphors stir in the dullest men some con- 
sciousness of the endless analogies between the 
life of Nature and the life of the soul. He learned 
it most of all from the Great Teacher, who de- 
lighted to speak to the multitude in parables, 
and who has connected our deepest spiritual ex- 
periences with the lilies of the field, the pearl of 



THE SYMBOLISM OF CHILDHOOD. 105 

great price, and tlie seed hidden deep in the 
earth. 

It mnst not be supposed, even for a moment, 
that Froebel explains to the child the meaning 
of his symbolic representations. He has no de- 
sire to multiply indefinitely the infant Casaubon 
making abstracts of Hop o' my Thumb, and any 
such use of his games and gifts would only cause 
them to resemble that same Casaubon who, as 
described by the racy Mrs. Cadwallader, was 
" like the wrong physic — nasty to take and sure 
to disagree." Froebel knows that the mind may 
be trusted to universalize its ideas, and leaves to 
its own alchemy the transmutation of the symbol 
into the reality symbolized. 

In the attempt to capture and hold the citadel 
of imagination, Froebel makes one of his most 
signal advances upon the theory and practice of 
his predecessors. Rousseau had nothing to say 
of imagination, save that it is the source of all 
human misery, and that its wings should be 
clipped as early and as close as possible. Pesta- 
lozzi ignores it — hence the dreary monotony of 
his sense-impressing exercises. He urges us to 
"make the child see, hear, and touch many 
things," to "introduce order into his observa- 
tions," and to " develop the elementary ideas of 
number and form in order that he may be able to 



y 



106 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

compare objects and exercise his judgment upon 
tliem." But the necessity of a " spiritual ques- 
tioning of sense and outward things " seems to 
have occurred neither to him nor to the more re- 
cent advocates of the doctrine that all thought 
is transformed sensation. Hence their practice 
tends to arrest development at its starting point, 
and a faithful adherence to their suggestions 
would produce in the pupil a strong likeness to 
that Peter Bell on whom Wordsworth has con- 
ferred so inglorious an immortality. 

Whether there be truth in the opinion that 
the natural and spiritual worlds are related as 
type and archetype is a question which each per- 
son must decide for himself. The symbolism of 
the kindergarten is neither justified by an affirm- 
ative nor condemned by a negative decision, 
but must be judged as we judge other symbolism, 
by its relationship to the needs of the developing 
soul. It is well, however, to remember that 
Froebel's belief on this subject is not a peculiar 
one, but has been shared by many great and 
devout thinkers. Fathers of the Church and 
Schoolmen of the middle ages joined in the dec- 
laration that "the whole world is a kind of 
visible gospel of that Word by which it was 
created " ; * and one of the greatest of modern 

* Cited from Lux Mundi. 



THE SYMBOLISM OP CHILDHOOD. 107 

theologians — the Rev. F. D. Maurice — repeatedly 
expresses the thought that " sensible things, by a 
necessity of their nature, are constantly testify- 
ing to us of that which it most concerns us to 
know — of the mysteries of our own life, and of 
God's relation to us." Swedenborg proclaims the 
doctrine of correspondence as the key that un- 
locks the meaning of the world ; and Emerson 
declares it to be "implied in all poetry, in alle- 
gory, in fable, in the use of emblems, and in the 
structure of language." Wordsworth announces 
as the theme of The Excursion "how exqui- 
sitely the individual mind to the external world 
is fitted, and how exquisitely, too, the external 
world is fitted to the mind." The "discerning 
intellect of man " must be wedded to the " goodly 
universe," and the poet will chant " the spousal 
verse of this great consummation." Finally, we 
may appeal to the witness of Goethe, who in the 
prologue to Faust affirms that the mission of the 
poet is to " call the particular fact to its univer- 
sal consecration,"* while in the mystic chorus 
which concludes this great drama of the soul 
he declares "all that is transitory to be but a 
symbol." 

Recognizing the relationship between the 

* Commentary on Goethe's Faust, D. J. Snider, vol. i, 
r- 114. 





108 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

world of Nature and the world of spirit, and with 
clear insight into the psychologic fact that feel- 
ing holds in solution the truths which are later 
precipitated in the crystal forms of conscious 
intelligence, Froebel strove to present the ideals 
of reason under the images of phantasy and 
thus to prepare the way for their discovery to 
thought. The too frequent misunderstanding 
of kindergarten symbolism is due to a lack of 
insight into the relationship between the lower 
and higher forms of intelligence. It is assumed 
that consciousness and reason are convertible 
terms, and that lack of the one implies absence 
of the other. Unconscious or partly conscious 
reason seems to be a contradiction in terms. Yet 
it is admitted that there is reason in nature, and 
that material objects and processes conform 
blindly to ideal types. With equal truth it may 
be affirmed that reason is always present in the 
soul — is, indeed, one with the soul — and that 
spiritual advance consists simply in an increas- 
ing consciousness of its nature and scope. 

Upon his recognition of this cardinal truth 
rests Froebel's claim to be considered "the 
psychologist of childhood," and upon the prac- 
tical procedure born of this insight rests his 
chief claim to originality as an educator. 



V. 

THE MEANING OF TLAY. 



" Behold the child among hia newborn blisses, 
A six-years' dftrling of a pygmy size ! 
See where mid work of his own hand he lies, 
Fretted by sallies of his mother's kisses, 

With light upon him from his father's eyes ; 
See at his feet some little plan or chart, 

Some fragment from his dream of human life, 
Shaped by liimself with newly learned art ! 
A wedding or a festival, 
A mourning or a funeral. 
And this hath now his heart. 
And unto this he frames his song, 
Then will he fit his tongue 
To dialogues of business, love, or strife ; 
But it will not be long 
Ere this bo thrown aside. 
And with new joy and pride 
The little actor cons another part ; 
Filling from time to time his " humorous stage " 
With all the persons, down to palsied age. 
That life brings with her in her equipage. 
As if his whole vocation 
"Were endless imitation." 
Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Eecollections of Early 
Childhood, WoRDSwoRTU. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE MEANING OF PLAY. 

No student of childhood will challenge the 
assertion that its most characteristic manifesta- 
tion is play. What flight and air are to the bird, 
play is to the child; it is both his distinctive 
activity and the element in which his life moves. 
In play he suffers the constraint neither of alien 
will nor of self-imposed purpose, but exercises 
an activity which is its own end and its own 
reward. To study him in his play is, therefore, 
to study him when he is most himself. 

Many plays originate in the desire to exert 
force, or to measure it against the force of others. 
The same instinct which impels the baby to j)ush 
with his feet against his mother's breast inspires 
the child's love of running, leaping, wrestling, 
and throwing. The delight he feels is in the 
consciousness of force ; the stimulus to exertion, 
the resistance to be overcome. Moreover, by 
measuring himself against others he compels 
them to recognize his strength, and thus sat- 



112 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

isfies that craving for recognition which is at 
all times the deepest hunger of the human 
heart. 

As the desire to exert force creates games of 
strength and skill, so the hunger to comprehend 
impels the child to reproduce in play the life 
around him. In their activities things show 
what they are, and the reproduction of the ac- 
tivity is the first step toward the understanding 
of the object. The life that utters itself is 
known in the uttered word. Spelling over the 
letters of the word we enter into the life. 
" What the child imitates," says Froebel, " he is 
trying to understand." He turns like the wheel, 
barks like the dog, says "Moo!" with the cow, 
and " Baa I " with the sheep ; he creeps with the 
mouse, flies with the bird, springs with the cat, 
and climbs with the squirrel. " I will be each of 
these things," is his unconscious thought, " that 
through being them I may know what they are." 

Even more significant than the imitation of 
alien activities is the child's representation of his 
own relationships and of those events of his life 
which have most deeply impressed his feelings 
and imagination. Dr. Stanley Hall tells of two 
little sisters who never tired of playing sister- 
hood, and I have myself watched a child of three 
years repeating p.gain and again in play the 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 113 

happy moment wlien she was first allowed to see 
her mother, who had been seriously ill. So the 
favorite amusement of a much - traveled baby 
was to float paper boats over the miniature 
Atlantic of a basin of water and revive the 
thrilling alternations of welcome and farewell. 
These facts hint the truth that external events 
are transmuted into experience only as they are 
reproduced in imagination and thought, and that 
life must be relived in order to be under- 
stood. 

The highest form of play is a synthesis of 
the other two. The instinctive exertion of in- 
dwelling force and the instinctive imitation of 
external activities blend in the effort to create an 
ideal world, and the child throws into an active 
poem the total life within and around him. The 
personages of his drama are flowers and birds, 
animals and insects ; his relatives, friends, and 
neighbors; kind fairies, cruel ogres, and mali- 
cious dwarfs. The one sole actor is the child 
himself who feels softly stirring within him the 
pulses of the universal heart. Reproducing his 
experience as a whole, he interprets it to himself, 
and, thus transfigured, it constitutes the spiritual 
environment in which he lives and moves and 
has his being. Moreover, in becoming creative, 
play conquers its own ideal form and witnesses 



114 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

to the truth, that man is made in the image of 
God, " the perfect Poet who in Creation acts his 
own conceptions." 

Thus far we have considered the play of a 
solitary child ; it must now be observed that only 
as it becomes social is play clearly revealed in its 
double nature — as, on the one hand, the expres- 
sion of indwelling force, and, on the other, the 
mirror held up to life. In the play world, as in 
the actual world, there are parents and children, 
nurses and babies, teachers and pupils. There is 
social life, with its interchange of visits, its en- 
tertainments, and its gossip ; there are weddings, 
baptisms, and funerals. Again, the play world 
has its trades and professions, its varied round of 
work, its circle of pleasures. Here the miniature 
Barnum exhibits his menagerie of wild beasts; 
yonder is a theater on whose boards a coquettish 
Cinderella tries on her diminutive slipper, or 
the Sleeping Beauty is awakened by the Fairy 
Prince. Now we come to a church from whose 
pulpit some infant Boanerges thunders wrath 
upon the doers of evil, and anon we enter a hos- 
pital where grave child-doctors are examining 
pulses and taking temperatures with button- 
hooks, while little white-capped nurses vibrate 
between the enormities of Sairy Gamp and the 
devotion of Sister Dora. Finally, the world of 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 115 

childish imagination has its different states, with 
their boundaries and treaties, their foreign wars 
and domestic revolutions, and, strangest of all, 
it has its written and spoken languages — the 
former a reproduction of the primitive picture- 
writing of mankind, the latter formed variously 
by adding some fixed syllable to the-end of each 
word, Introducing a fixed syllable before every 
vowel, or rebaptizing the letters of the alphabet 
and spelling out each word with these strange- 
sounding letters. 

To objectify himself, to take the world into 
himself, and to discover and represent the ideal 
implicit in each — such are the deep impulses 
which stir the child to play, as later they impel 
the man to literature and art. With a presenti- 
ment of the truth that to find himself he must 
flee himself, the soul of the child knocks at the 
gate of the universal life. The ideal which he 
holds up to himself in play reacts upon his char- 
acter, and what he represents himself as being 
he actually strives to become. Need we wonder, 
therefore, that Schiller can so emphatically as- 
sert that man is only man when he plays ? and 
thoughtful Jean Paul affirm that as meat and 
drink are man's first prose, and as the necessity 
of obtaining these creates trades and handicrafts, 
so is play his first poetry and the instrument 



116 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

through which all his higher possibilities are 
developed ? 

From insight into the deep meaning that lies 
hid in childish play there is but a single step to 
its use as a factor in education. This step Froebel 
was the first to take, and by taking it he placed 
himself in the van of educational reformers. 

That we may fully enter into Froebel's view 
of play, we must revert for a moment to his cen- 
tral thought of man as Gliedganzes of human- 
ity. Man is self -creative, hence free. He creates 
himself through ideals. These ideals are not 
individual, but generic ; to develop, therefore, 
means to become generic. It follows that the 
individual can develop only by actively repro- 
, ducing within himself the experience of man- 
kind. In the years, few and feeble, of his earthly 
life he can find out but little for himself, and 
must therefore, without detriment to his sponta- 
neity, learn the lesson of the centuries. It is not 
sufficient that he be taught externally the net 
outcome of human endeavor, for he comprehends 
and acquiesces in the result only as he relives 
the successive struggles by which it has been 
achieved. The error of all formal teaching is 
that it imposes a result without reproducing the 
experiences through which it was reached; the 
characteristic of all vital teaching is the develop- 



V 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 117 

ment of ideas in the order of their origination. 
For every thought has its pedigree, and it mnst 
be generated in the mind of the individual as it 
was generated in the mind of the race. 

The heir of all the ages must enter upon his 
inheritance before he can become the instrument 
of their increasing purpose. He must recreate 
the simple arts through which man first asserted 
his dominion over nature. He must dream over 
again the dreams of Reason preserved for him in 
myth and fable. He must stand before the Pyra- 
mids, and solve the riddle of the Sphinx. He 
must fight for Helen before the walls of Troy, 
and break the power of the Persian upon the 
plain of Marathon. He must march with the 
Roman legions to universal conquest, and, sink- 
ing himself into the depths of the Roman spirit, 
evolve therefrom the conception of universal law. 
He must feel the anguish of the nations " sitting 
in darkness and in the shadow of death," and be- 
hold with the awe-struck shepherds the dawning 
of the world's light. He must learn reverently 
the lesson of those ten silent centuries which 
found a voice in Dante, then hasten to England 
to win the victory of Runnymede, and sit at the 
feet of Shakespeare. He must sail with Colum- 
bus over unknown seas, land with the Pilgrims 
on Plymouth Rock, draw the sword with Wash- 



118 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

ington, and, standing with Goethe on the heights 
overlooking Valmy, behold in that momentous 
battle the birth of a new era. Thus only can the 
world into which he is born be born again in him, 
and the aspiration of his age become the aspira- 
tion of his soul. 

The object of education is to aid the effort of 
the individual to ascend into the life of the spe- 
cies. Evidently it confronts its greatest diffi- 
culty in the attempt to influence and direct the 
unconscious thought of the child. For the youth 
who has learned to think and who is eager to 
know, all difficulties have vanished. Science 
teaches him to perform for himself the experi- 
ments which lead up to her results. Studying 
the achievements of historic races, learning their 
languages, and surrendering himself to the coer- 
cive charm of their literature and art, he enriches 
himself with their distinctive life. So, through 
the newspapers, through travel, and through the 
reaction of social institutions, he is borne for- 
ward on the strong current of the universal life 
of to-day. If, with all these helps, any man re- 
main temporal or provincial, the responsibility 
rests first with himself and next with those who, 
in his irresponsible childhood, narrowed his sym- 
pathies, paralyzed his curiosity, and warped his 
thought. 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 119 

Interest in the life that is behind us is born 
of interest in the life that is around us, and the 
chief duty of early education is to foster those 
sympathies with nature and man out of which 
springs the desire to study the processes of the 
one and appropriate the experiences of the other. 
" At five years old/' says George Eliot, " mortals 
are not prepared to be stimulated by abstract 
nouns or to soar above preference into impar- 
tiality, and that prejudice in favor of milk with 
which we blindly begin is a type of the way 
body and soul must be nourished at least for a 
time." May not the deepest truths be made to 
stir as presentiments in the awakening mind ? 
May not the profoundest spiritual insights be 
rooted in the sympathies and fostered by exer- 
tions of the will ? May not the child receive 
even in babyhood a prejudice in favor of the uni- 
versal life, and from the beginning of his con- 
scious career live in the clear sunlight and fresh 
air of the generic ideal, instead of being shut 
up in the prison walls of his own atomic indi- 
viduality ? 

" Wo live by admiration, hope, and love, 
And even as these are well and wisely fixed 
In dignity of being we ascend." 

Recurring to our analysis of play, we observe 
that the end we have now defined is precisely the 



120 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

result the child blindly seeks. He is striving to 
interpret the world by creating its image. For 
obvious reasons his efforts can be only partially 
successful. He is unable to distinguish the form 
of the ideal from the wrappage of the actual life, 
and his picture of human deeds, being without 
perspective, is necessarily a caricature. His play 
is defective, not because it reflects both the good 
and the evil in his surroundings, but because it 
does not portray the good as good and the evil 
as evil. I remember a little girl who, after un- 
mercifully beating the playmate who was per- 
sonating her daughter, explained that she was 
not a real mother unless she could whip her 
child as much as she wished. In general, children 
seem to have a special relish for portraying cruel 
parents, tyrannical teachers, and refractory pu- 
pils, and they also delight in mimicking the snob- 
bishness and insincerity of our social intercourse, 
and the affectations which characterize many of 
our fashions. 

The traditional games handed down from age 
to age are truer than those of the individual 
child, because they image a wider life ; they are 
defective, in that they sometimes accentuate van- 
ishing rather than permanent elements of ex- 
perience, and in that they often reflect not a 
healthy but a depraved social condition. Thus, 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 121 

among the favorite games of French children is 
one which represents an interview between a 
priest and a penitent who, confessing to the griev- 
ous offense of stealing a pin, is for punishment 
commanded to kiss the confessor ; the refrain of 
the song which accompanies the game being, " If 
penance is so delightful, I'll sin again and again." * 
Another play pictures an interview between a mar- 
ried woman and her lover, the heroine exhorting 
the hero to fly from her husband, who has broken 
his promise of going to the country that day. 
The games of American children are generally of 
purer moral tone; still, their darling theme is 
courtship and marriage, and their favorite climax 
a kiss. Illustrations are superfluous, for we have 
all seen some eager child turn from "East to 
West to choose the one she loved the best," and 
observed the excitement of all the little players 
at the thrilling moment when the chorus sang : 

, ^•Open the ring to let him in, 
- And kiss him as he enters in." 

To make explicit the ideal implicit in instinc- 
tive play is the aim of Froebel in his Mutter und 
Kose Liedor. This aim he accomplishes by neg- 
lecting the accidental and emphasizing the typ- 

* I am told that this game is occasionally played by Ameri- 
can children. 



122 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

ical aspects of Nature and of human life. It is not 
intended that the games suggested by him shall 
be exclusively played, nor even played at all if 
others can be found which embody in better po- 
etic form the same universal ideals and aspira- 
tions. It is, however, emphatically claimed that 
Froebel pioneers the effort to transfigure play, 
and that all future advance must be upon the 
path which he has broken. 

Undoubtedly instinctive and traditional games 
furnish the material which may be transfigured 
into truly educative play. The claim that any 
one person (and that person an old man) could 
evolve a complete series of games, as the Ger- 
man artist evolved the camel " out of the silent 
depths of his own moral consciousness," is an 
absurdity. Froebel never claimed it for himself, 
nor has any sensible disciple claimed it for him. 
What he does claim is, that, through insight 
into the generic ideal, we may select from among 
traditional games those which will develop the 
child into its image ; that we may reproduce 
them in a form adequate to their aim ; and that 
we may present them not abstractly and alone, 
but in a logically related sequence. Thus pre- 
sented, each game re-enforces all the others, and 
becomes a vital element in a developing process. 
Each new generation must add plays imaging 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 123 

the fresh elements of experience, and, finally, 
each individual child needs dramatic reproduc- 
tion of the vital and formative facts of his own 
life. 

We count it the highest achievement of liter- 
ary art so to portray human deeds as to reveal 
their ethical character. We esteem it a mark of 
poetic genius to depict nature as the symbol of 
mind, and to show in " light and skies and moun- 
tains the painted vicissitudes of the soul." We 
reverently study these great works of art in or- 
der to clear our spiritual vision and interpret our 
own fragmentary experience. Need we hesitate, 
therefore, to admit that the child requires help in 
his efforts to interpret the life around him, and 
that, in order to realize its own ideal, play must 
be purified by rational insight ? 

It is needless to add that Froebel does not pro- 
pose to do away with the free play of childhood. 
For such free play there is plenty of time outside 
of the three hours spent in the kindergarten. Its 
importance as a means of preserving intellectual 
balance and developing individuality can not be 
too strongly insisted upon. But just as Froebel 
makes " the archetypes of nature the playthings 
of the child," and thus introduces a principle of 
order into his sense-perceptions, so he presents in 

the kindergarten games the typical aspects of 
10 



124 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

nature and the typical deeds of man, and thus 
introduces an organizing principle into the im- 
agination. 

r\ Having discovered the procreant idea of the 
kindergarten games, let us now endeavor to trace 
the genesis of the gifts and occupations. Direct- 
ing our attention once again to the spontaneous 
deeds of childhood, we observe that the primitive 
impulses to express the inner and investigate 
the outer life manifest themselves in forms other 
than those thus far considered. Prof. Preyer 
observes that " the most remarkable day, from a 
psychogenetic point, of view, in the life of an in- 
fant is the one in which he first experiences the 
connection of a movement executed by himself 
witli a sense-impression following upon it." This 
experience came to his child during the fifth 
month, when, upon tearing paper into smaller 
and smaller pieces, he noticed on the one hand 
the lessening size of the fragments and on the 
other the noise which accompanied his act. In 
the thirteenth month he found pleasure in shak- 
ing a bunch of keys, and in the fourteenth he 
deliberately took off and put on the cover of a 
can seventy-nine times without stopping for a 
moment's rest. Still later he enjoyed pulling 
out, emptying, refilling, and pushing in a table- 
drawer, heaping up and strewing about sand and 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 126 

garden mold, throwing stones into water, and 
pouring water into and out of bottles, cups, and 
watering-pots,* It is easy to see that each of 
these occupations was for the young experiment- 
er both a step in the discovery of his own self- 
hood as a causative energy and a step in the 
interpretation of external objects. 
I With increasing consciousness of his own 
power and increasing knowledge of the proper- 
ties and adaptations of objects the child begins 
to exercise a higher form of causative activity. 
Discerning in objects some ideal possibility, he 
seeks to make that possibility actual, and the 
mere exertion of force rises into productive and 
transforming energy. Observing the various 
forms in which this productive energy finds ex- 
pression, we become gradually aware of a fresh 
parallel between the development of the indi- 
vidual and that of the race. Science has shown 
that the embryonic period of physical develop- 
ment is a masquerade of long-vanished forms of 
life. In like manner the children of each new 
generation seek instinctively to revive the life 
that is behind them and in their favorite occu- 
pations and amusements re-enact the prehistoric 
experiences of mankind. All children crave liv- 
ing pets, build sand houses, and make caves in 

* Preycr's Dcvclo])Uiciit uf Ibe Intellect, p. 102. 



126 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

the eartli ; are fond of intertwining bits of straw, 
paper, or other pliable material ; delight in shap- 
ing bowls and cups and saucers out of mud ; and 
are inveterate diggers in the ground, even when, 
as in city streets and alleys, such digging is 
wholly without result. Can we fail to recognize 
in these universal cravings the soul echoes of 
that forgotten past when man began the sub- 
jugation of Nature by the taming of wild beasts, 
the erection of rude shelters, the weaving of gar- 
ments, and the manufacture of pottery ? Can 
we doubt that the order of history should be the 
order of education, and that before we teach the 
child to read and write we should aid his efforts 
to repeat in outline the earlier stages of human 
development ? 

Even more interesting than the reproduction 
of primitive industries is the struggle of the 
child's soul to express its own nature in the 
varied forms of art. To sing, to dance, to hear 
and repeat simple rhymes are chief delights of 
all young children ; and alliteration, too, has for 
them a tireless charm. Nor are they less eager 
to build, draw, paint, and model. To a pathetic 
experience of Froebel's own childhood, when, 
with such material as he could pick up, he vainly 
tried to imitate a Gothic church, may bo traced 
the impulse which bore fruit in the building 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 127 

gifts of the kindergarten. The love of drawing 
shows itself in many forms. The child draws 
with his finger in the air, traces outlines in the 
sand, makes shadow pictures on the wall, blows 
on the window-pane, and covers its clouded siir- 
face with his motley fancies, and even bites his 
cookies into the forms of men and animals. In 
like manner his plastic instinct finds satisfaction 
in shaping figures out of wax, clay, or dough, 
and, lacking a paint-box, he will find or invent 
coloring material for himself. 
/ The kindergarten gifts are Froebe?s practical 
response to the cravings of childhood. The six 
soft balls of the first gift, and the sphere, cube, 
and cylinder of the second gift, satisfy on the 
one hand the primitive desire to exert force and 
cause change, and on the other afford typical ex- 
periences of movement, form, color, direction, 
and position. The care of animals, the cultiva- 
tion of plants, the building exercises with the 
third and fourth gifts, the occupations of weav- 
ing, folding, cutting, sewing, intertwining, etc., 
accentuate the educative elements implicit in the 
industries of aboriginal men ; and finally, through 
the architectural exercises of the fifth and sixth 
gifts, through the work with tablets, sticks, and 
rings ; through drawing and painting exercises ; 
through peas-work, and through clay and card- 



128 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

board modeling, tlie artistic powers of the child 
are called into happy play, and he becomes, so far 
as in him lies, an architect, painter, designer, and 
sculptor. Add to these varied forms of artistic 
expression the kindergarten games with their 
dramatic representations, rhythmic movements, 
poetry and song, and wo must, I think, admit 
that Froebel has in truth provided for what he 
is fond of calling " the all-sided development " of 
innate powers. 

But, urges the objector, what is there in Froe- 
bel's scheme that is new or original ? Have not 
wise mothers always supplied their children with 
balls and building blocks, encouraged them to 
roll mud pies, shown them how to fashion simple 
objects out of paper and cardboard, and taught 
them the use of needle, scissors, pencil, and knife ? 
Lovers of the kindergarten recognize in all such 
criticisms testimony to the merit of Froebel's 
games and occupations, for were these something 
wholly new under the sun they would, according 
to all sound psychologic principles, be something 
wholly wrong. Froebel claims only to do with 
clear consciousness and persistent purpose what 
maternal instinct has always blindly and inter- 
mittently attempted. He gladly accepts the tra- 
ditional material, but vitalizes it by giving it a 
mathematical basis, and by formulating the prin- 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 129 

ciples wliich should govern its use. Through the 
productive exercises suggested by him, the child 
achieves a fivefold develoj^ment. Advancing from 
the external arrangement of fixed material to 
technical and artistic processes, he gains manual 
dexterity and skill. Rising from mere imitation 
and production by rule to free creation, he devel- 
ops originality of thought and power of expres- 
sion. Receiving from productive activity the 
incitement to observation, ho studies the salient 
qualities of physical objects and masters thus 
the alphabet of externality. Energizing to re- 
alize in external things his vision of their ideal 
possibilities, his will power is strengthened, and 
he becomes a practical force. Last, but not least, 
through the exertion of causal energy ho forms 
the habit of looking from sensible facts to their 
producing causes, and of explaining all objects 
and events through their process of evolution. 

Corruptio optimi pessima. It is a sad thing 
for any one who has mastered Froebel's prin- 
ciples to witness the perverted application so 
often made of his gifts. In many kindergartens 
the sole thought seems to be to use these gifts 
for teaching the elements of form and number ; 
in others, manual dexterity is the one object 
sought ; while in still others the material of the 
gifts suggests tedious object lessons on wood. 



130 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

iron, paper, wool, and straw. One kindergartner 
catches the idea of sequence, and forthwith she 
arranges a series of forms and drills her pupils 
to repeat them ; another conceives the plan of 
using the gifts to illustrate the songs, and pro- 
ceeds herself to work out exercises showing 
" what the mind did " or " what the pigeons 
saw." Finally, the kindergartner who is really a 
disciple of Rousseau, though she imagines her- 
self a follower of Froebel, blandly leaves the chil- 
dren to their own devices ; and whether they 
build up or tear down, whether they work with 
or without purpose and interest, stands aloof, 
serenely confident of the thaumaturgic power of 
wooden cubes, sticks, and tablets. Seeing these 
things, one ceases to wonder at Froebel's remark, 
that if in three hundred years after his death 
there should be in the world one kindergarten 
like that in his mind, his fondest hope would be 
more than realized. 

The manifold errors of kindergartners can be 
avoided only by clear insight into Froebel's edu- 
cational aim. That aim is the development of 
creative activity. Like Goethe, Froebel held that 
" building up teaches more than pulling in pieces ; 
joining together more than separating; animat- 
ing what is dead more than killing over again 
what is killed." Like Carlyle, his cry to each 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 131 

individual is : " Be no longer a chaos, but a world, 
or even worldkin. Produce ! produce ! Were it 
but thie pitifulest infinitesimal fraction of a prod- 
uct, produce it in God's name ! " For the ideal 
of creativeness in education he lived, and toiled, 
and pleaded. In the light of this ideal his 
gifts are seen to be instrumentalities for self- 
development through self-expression; without 
such light they collapse, as Mr. Bowen has 
aptly remarked, "into mere paper, sticks, and 
stones." 

/* The Hinterschlag professor who knew of the 
human soul only "that it had a faculty called 
memory, and could be acted on through the mus- 
cular integument by application of birch rods," 
had a simple task. The kindergartnor who has 
insight into Froebel's idea of man as Gliedganzes 
must expect and welcome a complicated task. 
Two thoughts she must keep ever before her: 
the first, that every exercise she gives should 
incite and develop self-activity ; the second, that 
in every exercise she should strive to multiply 
the power and knowledge of each member of her 
class by the power and knowledge of all its other 
members. In this way alone can she secure the 
results at which Froebel aimed, and though at 
first the path be narrow and the ascent steep, she 
may assure herself that the purgatorial mount 



132 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

of education is of such a nature that "aye the 
more one climbs the less it hurts." 
L Froebel's enthusiasm for the ideal of creative- 
ness was born of his insight into the nature of 
mind. His whole soul was fired with the thought 
that spirit is its own deed ; that man knows him- 
self only in so far as he makes himself objective ; 
and that he knows the external world only in so 
far as in some form he recreates it. This insight 
interprets nature, history, and theology, as well 
as individual life. The mystic Plotinus long ago 
pointed out that " Nature is greedy of beholding 
herself." * The study of history demonstrates the 
truth that each nation is the bearer of an idea. 
It actualizes this idea in its institutions and cus- 
toms, its literature, art, and philosophy ; then, its 
work being done, it gives way to the new nation 
whoso idea transcends its own. God himself, 
as Infinite Spirit, objectifies himself in an infi- 
nite creation, and the living universe is at once 
the condition and witness of his perfect self- 
knowledge. " Of little children is the kingdom 
of heaven, because, unchecked by the presump- 
tion and conceit of adults, they yield themselves 
in childlike faith to their formative and creative 
instinct." f 

* Memoir of Bronson Alcott, Sanborn, and Harris, p. 577. 
f Education of Man, Hailmann's translation, p. 31. 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 133 

■v^ Even this brief survey of kindergarten activi- 
ties throws into relief the radical difference be- 
tween the views of Froebel and those of Pesta- 
lozzi. With Pestalozzi the great word is sense- 
impression ; with Froebel the great word is self- 
expression. The former imagines a process 
through which " things stream in upon the 
mind"; the latter discerns the truth that ''the 
mind streams out upon things." The one trains 
his pupils to note in all objects certain constantly 
occurring qualities ; the other seeks to quicken 
and direct the mind's premonition of causal pro- 
cesses. In a word, the procedure of the Swiss 
reformer is rooted in that false psychology which 
holds that sense-perception is the source of all 
our knowledge ; while the procedure of the Ger- 
man educator implies the deeper insight that 
"mind grows by self-revelation." "I saw," 
writes Pestalozzi, "that through recognition of 
the unity, form, and name of an object my 
knowledge is definite knowledge ; by the gradual 
discovery of secondary qualities it becomes clear 
knowledge ; and through understanding the con- 
nection between all the characteristics of an ob- 
ject it becomes specific knowledge." " The child," 
writes Froebel, "develops like every other es- 
sential being in accordance with laws as simple 
as they are imperative. Of these laws the most 



134 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

important and the simplest is that force, existing, 
must exert itself ; exerting itself, it grows strong; 
strengthening, it unfolds ; unfolding, it repre- 
sents and creates; representing and creating, it 
rises into consciousness and culminates in in- 
sight." 

The kindergarten is the apotheosis of play. 
It is, moreover, a practical commentary upon the 
much-abused maxim that education must follow 
the child. Froebel follows the child in order to 
lead him. What is new in his method is the 
" induction of the substance of prescription into 
the form of freedom." * What he accomplishes 
is " to enable the pupil to walk freely in directed 
paths." Through the exercises with the kinder- 
garten gifts and occupations the child becomes 
increasingly conscious of his own power to 
master the external world. Through the ideals 
revealed in the songs and games he is incited 
to self-mastery, and begins to feel "the thing 
he ought to be, beating beneath the thing 
he is." 

The symmetry of the kindergarten system is 
much impaired by our failure to carry out in 
practice Froebel's suggestions with regard to 
gardening and the care of pet animals. To dig 
gardens and cultivate plants are just as truly 

* The Place of the Kindergarten, William T. Harris. 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 135 

kindergarten exercises as the plays with balls, 
cubes, tablets, and sticks. The same is true of 
the care of animal pets. We have been supinely- 
neglectful in both these matters, and, intrench-* 
ing ourselves in the sluggard's fortress of " im- 
possibility," have refused to make the earnest 
effort to which all so-called impossibilities sur- 
render. No right thing is imi^ossible, and in this 
case the objects to be achieved are not even diffi- 
cult. What kindergartner can not get a large 
box for a general garden, and a special flower- 
pot for each child ? What kindergarten need 
be without pet kittens, a hen and chickens, and 
an aquarium ? These things are found in some 
kindergartens. They will be found in all so soon 
as kindergartners begin to realize their educa- 
tional importance. 

In a number of the kindergarten games the 
child pictures his ideal relationship to the animal 
world. He calls and feeds the chickens; opens 
the door of the pigeon house, that the glad birds 
may fly out into the sunshine ; closes it. that 
they may be safe at night ; fastens securely the 
barnyard gate, that none of the animals may 
stray from its safe inclosure. The correlate of 
this series of games is actual care of and respon- 
sibility for some living pet. Froebel's system is 
an educational organism, and we can not lop off 



136 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

ono of its main limbs witliout detriment to the 
life of tlie whole. 

By connecting the actual care of pet animals 
with plays picturing the child's duty toward 
them we achieve a twofold result : we stir the 
young heart with premonitions of the privilege 
of care-taking, and with glimmerings of the 
gratitude he owes to those who have cared for 
him. It is often said that children are imper- 
vious to the feeling of gratitude. The reason is 
obvious : they can not appreciate the care given 
to them until they have given care ; and the only 
way in which mortals of any age can learn to be 
grateful is by doing deeds which merit gratitude. 
In caring for animals, moreover, the child learns 
to subordinate his pleasure to their good, purifies 
his selfish love for them into a thoughtful and 
protecting affection, and fosters in his own heart 
that spirit of good will and helpfulness which, 
transferred from feeble and defenseless animals 
to feeble and defenseless human beings, blossoms 
into the disinterested service of mankind. 

Ttose educators who recognize a parallel be- 
tween the development of the individual and 
that of the race may find food for thought in the 
suggestion that the chief reason why the move- 
ment toward civilization was so much slower in 
America than in Europe was the absence from 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. I37 

the Western continent of all domesticable ani- 
mals other than the dog.* Doubtless, the most 
significant features of the transition to pastoral 
life were that it broke up the roving habits of 
savages, gave steadiness and permanence to hu- 
man activities, and set in motion the long train 
of social and political ideals latent in the right 
of personal property. But when men ceased to 
be merely hunters and fishers, and became herds- 
men and shepherds, there occurred also a moral 
revolution. The attitude of man toward the 
brute creation became protective instead of pred- 
atory. This changed attitude developed intelli- 
gence and sympathy, and fostered those instincts 
of watchfulness, fidelity, and self-sacrifice which 
have made the Good Shepherd the tenderest type 
of divine love and care. 

The sense of duty roused by responsibility for 
pet animals may be strengthened by care for 
plants, and, faithful to his plan of suggesting 
ideals in play, Froebel gives us the games of The 
Garden Gate and The Little Gardener — the idea 
brought out in the former being the obligation 
of the child to guard and protect the flowers 
which give him so much pleasure, while the 
thought underlying the latter is the privilege 
and reward of nurture. From this make-believe 

*The Discovery of Americu, Juhn Fiske, vol. i, p. 37. 



138 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

gardening Froebel wislied the cliildren to go on 
to the actual care of plants ; and the omission of 
garden work from the programme of the kinder- 
garten robs the little ones of many precious 
experiences. Childhood, like every age of life, 
needs its duties, and these must be sim2:)le, defi- 
nite, and, above all, inexorable. Moreover, the 
child must feel that his duties are genuine, and 
not mere burdens imposed upon him by the arbi- 
trary will of parents or teachers. All duties are 
born of relationships, and should be rooted in the 
feelings to which these relationships give rise. 
Out of relationship to those above us arise the 
duties of trust and obedience ; out of relationship 
to those who stand on the same level with our- 
selves arise the duties of helpfulness and partici- 
pation; out of relationship to persons or things 
beneath us arise the duties of protection and 
nurture. Without degree "all things would meet 
in mere oppugnancy " ; through degree each indi- 
vidual is blessed with the opportunity of culti- 
vating that "threefold reverence" upon which, 
as Goethe teaches us in Wilhelm Meister, " de- 
pends everything through which a man becomes 
man on every side." The first reverence is culti- 
vated in children through their relationship to 
parents and teachers ; the second, through their 
relationship to each other ; the third may be 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 139 

most effectively developed through the relation- 
ship to animals and plants. Flowers not watered 
will wither ; the bird or kitten not fed will die. 
If, through sloth or thoughtlessness, the child 
fails to give the needed care, he brings upon 
himself the pain of loss. Moreover, he must 
study the objects of his care, and learn to under- 
stand the needs he tries to meet. Plants must 
not be watered in the hot midday ; many plants 
die if watered directly on the roots. Finally, as 
the child matures, he should learn to weed his 
garden, to prune his plants, and to inflict ujjon 
his dog or kitten whatever pain is needed to in- 
sure its safety. Through such experiences he 
gains reverence " for what is beneath him," and 
cultivates the strength which will enable him 
later to grapple bravely and hopefully with the 
inevitable trials and responsibilities of life. 

The care of animals and plants is important 
for its influence upon the intellect as well as for 
its influence upon character. It is needless to do 
more than allude to the fact that what the child 
cares for he will observe and study, and that 
hence gardens and living pets form the best pos- 
sible introduction to botany and natural history. 
Many suggestions with regard to the transition 
from care-taking to observation, from observa- 
tion to systematic study, are to be found scat- 
11 



140 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

tered througli Froebers writings, and should be 
carefully pondered. The main points upon which 
he insists are, that attention shall be directed to 
distinctions which the child himself is capable of 
making, and that among such distinctions those 
shall be selected which are typical and charac- 
teristic. Thus he avoids, on the one hand, the 
extreme of formalism, and on the other that arbi- 
trary classification so much encouraged by " spon- 
taneous teachers," and which reminds one of the 
logic by which the pigeon in Wonderland proved 
Alice to be a kind of serpent. " Do you eat eggs ? " 
asked the pigeon. " Yes," explained Alice ; " all 
little girls eat eggs." " Well, then," announced 
the pigeon decisively, " all little girls are ser- 
pents." 

■J^ Our survey of the instinctive manifestations 
of the child has shown us that his dominant im- 
pulses are to reproduce the life that is around 
him ; to revive the life that is behind him ; to 
foster the life that is beneath him ; and to pro- 
ject the life that is within him. Rooted in these 
generic impulses, the kindergarten may be sure 
of a healthy and vigorous growth. Detached 
from them, it will wither and die like the rootless 
flowers which little children stick into the sand. 

It has been the fashion to say that Froebel 
ignored the antithesis between work and play. 



THE MEANING OP PLAY. 14,1 

In my judgment it was precisely because he un- 
derstood this antithesis that he was able to invent 
the kindergarten. 

In work the mind concentrates itself ; in play 
it surrenders itself to the allurement of its ob- 
ject. Work demands the subordination of per- 
sonal inclination ; play occupies itself according 
to its own caprice ; work seeks an end different 
from its activity ; in play the end sought is the 
activity itself ; work prepares the individual for 
combination with his fellows ; play develops 
originality, and enriches the individual with 
something distinctive which he may contribute 
to his fellows ; work without play degrades man 
into a machine ; play without work makes him 
the toy of circumstance and impulse. Surely it 
is only necessary to grasp these familiar antithe- 
ses to recognize that harmonious development 
demands a transition from one to the other, and 
it is only necessary to comprehend the kinder- 
garten to be sure that it is the transition de- 
manded. 

With recognition of the transitional character 
of the kindergarten comes insight into its lim- 
its as an educational appliance. Its function is 
mediatorial, and it bridges the chasm between 
childhood, which is predominantly the period of 
self-development through self-expression, and 



142 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

boyhood, which, is predominantly the period for 
that study of the external and manifold through 
which the eyes of the mind are slowly opened to 
the vision of the whole. The kindergarten also 
mediates the family and the school, and avoids 
the too abrupt transition from the nurture of the 
one to the discipline of the other. When we 
have learned to make the transition from truths 
taught by authority to truth inwardly discerned, 
we shall have done for youth what Froebel has 
done for childhood, and our system of education 
will be an organic unity, wherein " evolution pro- 
ceeds by numerous successive and slight modifi- 
cations," and " all differences in kind are brought 
about by the gradual accumulation of differences 
in degree." * 



* " As the preceding period of numan development, the 
period of childhood was predominantly that of life for the sake 
merely of living, for making the external internal, so the 
period of boyhood is predominantly the period for learning, for 
making the external internal. 

" On the part of parents and educators the period of infancy 
demanded chiefly fostering care. During the succeeding period 
of childhood, which looks upon man predominantly as a unit 
and would lead him to unity, training prevails. The period of 
boyhood leads man chiefly to the consideration of particular re- 
lationships and individual things, in order to enable him later 
on to discover their inner unity. The inner tendencies and re- 
lationships of individual things and conditions are sought and 
established. 

" Now, the consideration and treatment of individual and par- 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 143 

ticular things, as such, and in their inner bearings and relation- 
ships, constitute the essential character and work of instruc- 
tion ; therefore boyhood is the period in which instruction 
predominates. 

" This instruction is conducted not so much in accordance 
with the nature of man as in accordance with the fixed, definite, 
clear laws that lie in the nature of things, and more particularly 
the laws to which man and things are equally subject. It is 
conducted not so much in the method in which the universal, 
eternal law finds peculiar expression in man as rather in the 
method in which this law finds peculiar expression in each ex- 
ternal thing, or simultaneous expression in both man and thing. 
It is conducted, then, in accordance with fixed and definite con- 
ditions lying outside the human being ; and this implies knowl- 
edge, insight, a conscious and comprehensive survey of the field. 

" Such a process constitutes the school in the widest sense of 
the word. The school, then, leads man to a knowledge of ex- 
ternal things, and of their nature in accordance with the par- 
ticular and general laws that lie in them ; by the presentation 
of the external, the individual, the particular, it leads man to a 
knowledge of the internal, of unity, of the universal. There- 
fore, on entering the period of boyhood, man becomes at the 
same time a schoolboy. With this period school begins for 
him, be it in the home or out of it, and taught by the father, 
the members of the family, or a teacher. School, then, means 
here by no means the schoolroom, nor school-keeping, but the 
conscious communication of knowledge, for a definite purpose 
and in definite inner connection." — Education of Man, Ilail- 
mann's translation, pp. 94, 95. 

Proebel's clearest statement of the ideal of creative activity 
is as follows : 

" God creates and works productively in uninterrupted con- 
tinuity. Each thought of God is a work, a deed, a product ; 
and each thought of God continues to work with creative power 
in endless productive activity to all eternity. Let him who 
has not seen this behold Jesus in his life and works ; let him 
behold genuine life and work in man ; let him, if he truly 
lives, behold his own life and work. 

" The spirit of God hovered over chaos, and moved it ; and 



144: SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

stones and plants, beasts and man, took form and separate being 
and life. God created man in his own image ; therefore, man 
should create and bring forth like God. His spirit, the spirit of 
man, should hover over the shapeless, and move it that it may 
take shape and form, a distinct being of its own. This is the 
high meaning, the deep significance, the great purpose of work 
and industry, of productive and creative activity. We become 
truly godlike in diligence and industry, in working and doing, 
which are accompanied by the clear perception or even by the 
vaguest feeling that thereby we represent the inner in the 
outer ; that we give body to spirit and form to thought ; that 
we render visible the invisible; that we impart an outward, 
finite, transient being to life in the spirit. Through this 
godlikeness we rise more and more to a true knowledge of 
God, to insight into his spirit; and thus, inwardly and out- 
wardly, God comes even nearer to us. Therefore, Jesus so 
truly says in this connection of the poor, "Theirs is the king- 
dom of heaven," if they could but see and know it, and practice 
it in diligence and industry, in productive and creative work. 
Of children, too, is the kingdom of heaven; for, unchecked 
by the presumption and conceit of adults, they yield themselves 
in childlike trust and cheerfulness to their formative and 
creative instinct." 

Compare with this statement of Froebel's the following lines 
from Browning : 

" I find first 
Writ down for very A B C of fact, 
• In the beginning God made heaven and earth ' ; 
Prom which, no matter with what lisp, I spell 
And speak you out a consequence — that man, 
Man, as befits the made, the inferior thing — 
Purposed, since made, to grow, not make in turn, 
Yet forced to try and make, else fail to grow — 
Formed to rise, reach at, if not grasp and gain 
The good beyond him — which attempt is growth — 
Repeats God's process in man's due degree, 
Attaining man's proportionate result — 
Creates, no, but resuscitates, perhaps. 
Inalienable, the arch-prerogative 



THE MEANING OF PLAY. 145 

Which turns thought, act — conceives, expresses too ! 

No less, man, bounded, yearning to be free, 

May so project his surplusage of soul 

In search of body, so add self to self 

By owning what lay ownerless before — 

So find, so fill full, so appropriate forms — 

That, although nothing which had never life 

Shall get life from him, be, not having been, 

Yet, something dead may get to live again, 

Something with too much life or not enough, 

Which, either way imperfect, ended once : 

An end whereat man's impulse intervenes, 

Makes new beginning, starts the dead alive, 

Completes the incomplete and saves the thing. 

Man's breath were vain to light a virgin wick — 

Half-burued-out, all but quite-quenched wicks o' the lamp 

Stationed for temple-service on this earth, 

These indeed let him breathe on and relume 1 " 



VI. 

OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 



" And there Tom saw the last of the Gairfowl, standing up on the 
Allalonestone, all alone. And a very grand old lady she was, full 
three feet high, and bolt upright, like some old Highland chieftainess. 
She had on a black velvet gown, and a white pinner and apron, and a 
very high bridge to her nose (which is a sure mark of high breeding), 
and a large pair of white spectacles on it, which made her look rather 
odd ; but it was the ancient fashion of her house. 

" And instead of wings she had two little feathery arms, with which 
she fanned herself, and complained of the dreadful heat ; and she kept 
on crooning an old song to herself, which she learned when she was a 
little baby-bird, long ago. . . , 

" Tom came up to her very humbly, and made his bow ; and the 
first thing she said was : 

" ' Have you wings ? Can you fly ? ' 

" ' Oh, dear, no, ma'am ; I should not think of such a thing,' said 
cunning little Tom. 

" ' Then I shall have great pleasure in talking to you, my dear. It 
is quite refreshing nowadays to see anything without wings. They 
must all have wings, forsooth, now, every new upstart sort of bird, 
and fly. What can they want with flying, and raising themselves 
above their proper station in life ? In the days of my ancestors no 
birds ever thought of having wings, and did very well without ; and 
now they all laugh at me because I keep to the good old fashion.' " — 
Water Babies, Charles Kingsley. 



CHAPTER VI. 

OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 

The origin of the Mutter- und Koselieder* 
explains its object. Twenty-four years' expe- 
rience as a practical teacher convinced Froebel 
that any true reform in education must begin 
with its foundations, and led, in 1840, to the es- 
tablishment of the first kindergarten. Expe- 
rience with the little children in the kinder- 
garten showed him that conscious aims and 
methods were needed in the nursery. Hence he 
crowned his educational work with the book in 
which he seeks to reveal to mothers the meaning 
of their own instinctive play, and to deepen in 
them the consciousness of their solemn vocation. 

The Mother-Play is a collection of fifty-five 
songs. Seven introductory songs express the 

* It seems impossible to find an English equivalent for the 
title Mutter- und Koselieder. Kosen, an untranslatable word, 
suggests the tender prattle and play of a mother with her in- 
fant. A clew to the meaning Froebel attached to this word is 
given in the motto to the Kicking Song. 



150 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

feelings of a mother toward her infant child, 
and show how through playful incitement she 
seeks to develop its activity ; forty-nine are little 
games which she may play with him, and the 
concluding song outlines the results presumably 
attained. Many of the songs are simply adapta- 
tions of rhymes and plays which Froebel found 
in actual use among mothers ; some are compo- 
sitions of his own, suggested by incidents of 
child life which came under his observation, and 
a few were written by his wife and tested by her 
in her play with the little son and daughter of 
Middendorff. The music of the songs was com- 
posed by Froebel's disciple, Robert Kohl ; while 
the pictures illustrating them are the work of 
the painter Frederick Unger, who had been in 
his boyhood a pupil of Froebel's and was deeply 
imbued with his spirit. Froebel himself wrote 
for each play a rhymed motto suggesting and 
epitomizing its meaning, and a prose commen- 
tary giving a full explanation both of the game 
and its accompanying illustration. The conver- 
sations included in many of these commentaries 
are wonderful pictures of an ideal intercourse 
between mother and child. 

Froebel gives the following account of the 
genesis and development of the Mutter- und Kose- 
lieder : " As I was one day walking through the 



OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 151 

fields there came toward me a motlier carrying 
her baby on her arm. * Call the chickens ! ' she 
cried to the child, at the same time showing 
him how to beckon with his finger. Deeply im- 
pressed with the simple act, its grounds and con- 
sequences, I went home and wrote out the little 
game Beckoning the Chickens. Another and 
another followed, and soon I had quite a collec- 
tion of songs and games. I sent them as I wrote 
them to a mother whose little child was ill. She 
assured me she could not thank me enough for 
the delight they gave him. Thus, gradually, 
through a constant interchange of thought and 
feeling with mothers, grew this book." 

The care with which Froebel chose his plays, 
and the thoroughness with which he tested them, 
are shown in his letters to his friends and co- 
workers during the two years which elapsed be- 
tween the publication of an originally small col- 
lection of Koseliedchen and the appearance of 
the Mother-Play in its expanded and permanent 
form. Not to weary the reader with citations, I 
limit myself to the following extract from a let- 
ter to his cousin, Mrs. Schmidt, the organizer of 
the second kindergarten : 

" To help the child to use his own body, his 
limbs, and his sensations, and to assist mothers 
and those who take the place of mothers to the 



152 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

consciousness of their duties toward the children, 
and to a lofty conception of those duties, I have 
carefully preserved several little songs and games 
as they have occurred to me in the course of my 
life, and have given them the name of Little 
Nursery Songs (Koseliedchen) and Games, to train 
the body, the limbs, and the senses, for quite 
little children. I send this collection to you for 
your severe criticism. You, best of all, from the 
rich treasure of your experience as a mother, can 
pronounce whether I have or have not hit the 
mark at which I have aimed. Strike out ruth- 
lessly all that seems to you unsuitable. And if 
you could give the songs to mothers who have 
quite little children, so that they may test them 
thoroughly, or if you are able yourself thus to 
try them, I should be above all things de- 
lighted." * 

The formal defects of the Mutter- und Kose- 
lieder are freely admitted by its most enthusi- 
astic students. Its verse is halting, its pictures 
are crude, its music is poor. Froebel's mottoes 
and commentaries are often obscure. His lit- 
erary style is of the worst. In a word, the book 
presents imperfectly a pioneering idea. That this 
idea will hereafter clothe itself in a more fitting 

* Froebel's Letters on the Kindergarten, translated by Emily 
Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore, p. 109. 



OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 153 

garment, we believe, but "until such a garment 
has been woven we must cling to the idea itself 
and forget its wrappage. 

Critics of the Mother-Play have, however, not 
confined themselves to pointing out its defective 
form, but have also attacked its substance and 
aim. The book is declared to be a dangerous in- 
vasion of that realm of nurture where maternal 
instinct should have full sway. The mother's 
heart, it is urged, teaches clearly what she should 
do for and with her child, and the attempt to ele- 
vate an instinctive into a conscious procedure is 
as harmful as it is absurd. This objection scarcely 
merits a serious reply. Instinct has not prevent- 
ed the Indian mother from flattening her baby's 
skull, nor the Chinese mother from cramping and 
deforming its feet, and all the scornful energy of 
Rousseau was needed to teach European mothers 
the evil effects of long, close, swaddling garments. 
Since instinct has thus proved itself incapable of 
caring for the body, it is folly to talk about trust- 
ing to it the development of heart and mind. 

Doubtless there are women who have a genius 
for motherhood, and who do by nature all the 
things required in the law of education. These 
are the artist mothers, but, like other genuine 
artists, they are few in number, and the great 
majority of women can not claim to be more 



154 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

than mecliaiiics of the mind. It was from artist 
mothers that Froebel learned his secret. It was 
the criticism of such mothers that he sought. It 
is by such mothers that he will be most appre- 
ciated. The fear that spiritual motherhood will 
lose any of its power or charm by being lifted 
into the realm of clearer consciousness is about 
as absurd as the objection of old Lady Gairfowl 
to the " upstart birds with wings." 

A more serious objection to the Mother-Play 
is that it lacks sequence and arrangement. This 
criticism, if valid, indicates not only a vital de- 
fect in the book, but a singular violation on 
Froebel's part of one of his own fundamental 
principles. No student of his writings can fail 
to be struck by his recurrent statements of the 
important idea of continuity. In the Education 
of Man he urges that *' development should pro- 
ceed continuously from one point, and that this 
continuous progress should be recognized and 
guarded." In the Mother-Play itself he insists 
that "in God's world just because it is God's 
world, the law of all things is continuity." His 
gifts are developed one from another on a prin- 
ciple of inner connection, and he is never tired 
of repeating that each gift fulfills that which 
precedes and foreshadows that which follows 
it. His symbolism arises, as has been already 



OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 155 

pointed out, from his perception of the connec- 
tion between the lower and higher faculties of 
mind, and the law of their unfolding. His whole 
career as an educator shows that he not only pos- 
sessed the idea of continuity, but was possessed 
by it. Is it possible that in his last and greatest 
book he can have been untrue to or unmindful of 
this cardinal principle ? * 

The apparent lack of sequence in the Mother- 
Play is, I think, explained by the fact that while 
each game is typical of a range of experience, and 
may therefore be played by children of different 
ages, its introduction is always a response to 
some manifestation of the child, and the order 
of the games corresponds to an ascending series 
of indicated needs. Thus the Falling, falling 

* " Your child will leurn to toddle before he learns to walk ; 
he tries to stand before he makes an effort to step forward ; he 
tries to strengthen and develop his legs and his whole body be- 
fore he is willing to stand on his legs, and takes pleasure in so 
doing. If you make your child, just because he has legs, stand 
and walk all at once, you will make him have weak bowlegs. 
Now, mother, in the development of the body, the law of the 
intellect is also expressed. If you come up with help too late, 
your child is awkward and clumsy in body and mind ; if you 
come too soon — alas! we meet with only too many people who 
from this cause wander about with weak, bowlcgged dispo- 
sitions, just as children do with weak bowlegs. mother, 
mother ! and all you who take her place, do not forget this : 
rear your child in harmony with life's interdependence, and 
according to its simple laws." — Mother-Play, Translation hy 
Frances and Emily Lord, p. 154- 
13 



156 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

play is the mother's answer to the child's dawn- 
ing sense of a life distinct from her own, while 
the games of Hide and Seek and the Cuckoo 
mark a much more advanced consciousness of 
personality, and a deeper longing for recogni- 
tion. The Kicking Game is a response to the 
simple instinct of movement ; the Weathervane, 
to the child's first attempts at imitation and 
his earliest presentiment of cause ; the Tick- 
tack, to his delight in listening to the clock and 
watching the swinging pendulum ; Beckoning 
the Chickens, to his recognition of a life in Na- 
ture, which sympathizes with his own ; the Bird's 
Nest, to his waking consciousness of mother 
love ; the Flower Basket, to the desire of ex- 
pressing love ; the Carpenter, to an anticipation 
of the meaning of home ; the Three Songs of the 
Knights, to that desire of approbation which 
originally expresses simply the stirrings of social 
sympathy. There is not a single play in the 
Mutter- und Koselieder whose genesis may not 
be traced to some hint of need given by the child, 
and these hints are the buds which show where a 
new branch or twig is ready to burst forth upon 
the tree of life. On the other hand, just as the 
branch having budded continues to grow, so each 
genuine need of the child deepens as he matures. 
Recognition of this fact leads Froebel to suggest 



OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 157 

in his commentaries the deeper possibilities latent 
in each of his little games, and its consequent 
adaptability to children of different ages. In like 
manner the pictures refer sometimes to the ear- 
lier, sometimes to the later, often to both stages 
in the development of the play which they illus- 
trate. 

That the order of the songs in the Mother- 
Play is not an accidental one is shown, moreover, 
by the fact that they fall into four well-marked 
divisions, to each of which Froebel calls atten- 
tion in his commentaries. The first division in- 
cludes all the games before the Target ; * the 
second, those intervening between the Target 
and the Light-Songs ; the third, the Light-Songs 
themselves, and the plays between these and the 
Knights ; the fourth, all the remaining songs in 
the book. 

The games included in the first division relate 
in general to the elementary experiences of move- 
ment, change, and time. The only relationship 
thrown into relief is that between mother and 
child, though the germs of sympathy with the 
life of nature are fostered by the plays of the 
Chickens and Pigeons. The only sensations con- 
sciously discriminated are those falling within the 

* I make one change in Froebel's arrangement, by placing 
the Grass-Mowing in the second group. 



158 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

spheres of taste and smell. With the game of the 
Target, as Froebel points out, we enter upon a new 
stage of development — a stage characterized, as 
he further informs us, by the desire of the child 
to classify objects according to their number, 
form, and size. Number makes it possible to 
grasp together the separate elements of a spatial 
whole, and to express the law of proportion ; to 
recognize as a synthetic unity the successive 
stages of a developing process, and to mark 
off and accentuate rhythmic intervals of time. 
Hence in this group of games Froebel calls at- 
tention to the family as a membered unity, to 
the series of acts involved in a constructive pro- 
cess, and to the laws of rhythm and proportion 
both in their physical and spiritual applications. 
This series ends with The Children on the Tower 
— a review game, wherein nearly all the preced- 
ing plays are brought together, and through 
which a hint is given the child that his own life 
is a process of becoming, and that in order to 
know what is, one must learn something of how 
it came to be. 

Perhaps the most critical moment of the 
child's life is that in which he begins to distin- 
guish between the outside and inside of things. 
The signs of this awakening consciousness are 
many and unmistakable. The ticking of the 



OLD LADY GAIRPOWL. 159 

watcli no longer satisfies ; papa must open it 
and show its moving wheels. The doll is broken, 
to find out what makes her eyes roll ; the kaleido- 
scope shattered, to discover the secret of its shin- 
ing stars. When the mother speaks, her face is 
scanned to see if she means what she says ; more- 
over, what she says and does to-day is compared 
with the words and actions of yesterday. The 
child has begun to discriminate between soul and 
body, reality and appearance, unity and mani- 
foldness. He is one, though his feelings and 
actions are many ; this unity in him is active 
and invisible — the hidden essence of his varying 
manifestations. Such an invisible soul there 
must be in all things. What is its nature ? How 
is it related to him, and he to it ? 

The reader will understand that in attempt- 
ing to describe this nascent consciousness I have 
necessarily given it a definiteness it does not in 
reality possess. It is impossible to picture in 
words the faint dawning of the inner light, but 
a certain mark of its approach is the child's 
ability to use the pronoun I. For the use of 
this pronoun, as Rosmini has pointed out, pro- 
supposes, first, that he who uses it has the ab- 
stract (or general) conception of the power of 
speaking ; second, that he refers the act of speak- 
ing to a speaking subject ; third, that he under- 



160 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

stands that the / indicates precisely this speaking 
subject.* In a word, the ability to say 1 implies 
that the universal and the particular are at once 
distinguished and identified.! 

To this dawning consciousness of the relation 
between universal and particular, Froebel re- 
sponds in the ten songs which have for their 
theme the varied aspects of light. They show 
light as the revealer both of individuality and 
relativity ; light as a self -diffusive and creative 
energy ; light and darkness as the physical cor- 
respondences of good and evil ; light and the eye 

• Rosmini's Method in Education, p. 233. 

t " 7— God excepted, who is at once the great original I and 
Thou — is the noblest as well as the most incomprehensible thing 
which language expresses or which we contemplate. It is these 
all at once, as the whole realm of truth and conscience, which 
without I is nothing." — Jean Paul, Levana, Bohii's translation^ 
p. lU. 

" Never shall I forget the inner sensation, hitherto untold to 
any, when I was present at the birth of my self-consciousness, of 
which I can specify both time and place. One morning, when 
still quite a young child, I was standing under the doorway and 
looking toward the wood-stack on the left, when suddenly the 
internal vision,' I am an ego,^ passed before me like a lightning- 
flash from heaven, and has remained with me shining brightly 
ever since ; my ego had seen itself then for the first time and 
forever. Deceptions of the memory are here hardly conceivable, 
since no story related to me could mingle its additions with an 
occurrence which took place in the shrouded holy of holies of 
a human being, and whose strangeness alone has given perma- 
nence to such every-day circumstances as those which accom- 
panied it." — Levana, Bohn's trafislaiiori, p. £5. 



OLD LADY GAIRFOWL, 161 

as symbolizing truth and the mind ; the pleas- 
ures of sight as contrasted with the grosser 
pleasures of touch, and adumbrating the truth 
that the purest joys of life are apart from mate- 
rial possession. Above all, however, they prophe- 
sy the transition from physical to spiritual unity, 
and kindle in the imagination the tiny spark of 
presentiment which shall one day blaze into rec- 
ognition of the truth that the universal is always 
the creator of the particular. 

The Light-Songs are followed by eight games 
which deal with practical activities.* In the 
commentary on The Charcoal Burner, which is 
the first of this series, Froebel makes the follow- 
ing suggestive remark : " We have recognized 
the eye as the medium between man's inner 
being and the spiritual world. In like manner 
the hand is a special medium between the in- 
ner life and the surrounding material world." 
Through its use the child learns how much there 
is to be done immediately around him. The 
games thus introduced picture the work of the 
Charcoal Burner, the Carpenter, Joiner, and 
Wheelwright, and call attention to the pleasure 
of developing jjlant life and the duty of protect- 

* I follow Wichard Lange, Seidel includes in this division 
the Song of Smell, which, in my judgment, should be included 
in the first group. 



162 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

ing domestic anipaals. The object of these games 
is to deepen the consciousness of social dependence 
and kindle the sense of social obligation. They 
relate to the preceding songs, as the hand to the 
eye, as doing to seeing, or, stated more abstractly, 
as the practice of duty to the vision of truth. 

Up to this point in the Mutter- und Koselieder 
there has been no direct attempt to work upon 
the moral sense. The relationships of the child 
to nature, to man, and to God have been pictured, 
and the duties arising out of these relationships 
have been incidentally suggested. There has, 
however, been no hint of the compulsory nature 
of these duties. In the three songs of the 
Knights, and the games which follow them, we 
advance, so Froebel tells us, to a new stage of 
development. " What has hitherto been done for 
the formation of the child's disposition and will 
has been accidental — as it were, a thing aside ; 
what is now done is with clear intention and de- 
liberate aim." The moral imperative is revealed. 
The words ought and miist acquire definite mean- 
ing ; and conscience, begotten of imagination, be- 
gins to utter her commands, her warnings, and 
her threats.* With this attempt to foster self- 

* See, in Memoir of Bronson Alcott, by F. B. Sanborn and 
W. T. Harris, pages 654-656, some very suggestive remarks by 
Dr. Harris on the process through which imagination generates 
the conscience. 



OLD LADY GAIRFOWL. 163 

directing activity the Mother-Play comes to an 
end. 

It has seemed important to consider in some 
detail the objections urged against the Mother- 
Play, because adverse criticism has tended to di- 
minish the practical influence of the book, and 
hence to prevent the realization of Froebel's 
own most cherished hopes. "It would be an 
everlasting loss," said the thoughtful Diester- 
weg, " if the treasures which lie in Friedrich 
Froebel were allowed to perish. He is a jewel, 
a pearl of price." * These treasures are laid up 
in the Mother-Play. Froebel himself always 
made this book the basis of his lectures to moth- 
ers and kindergartners, and never ceased to refer 
to it as the point of departure for a natural 
system of education. It has been recognized by 
most of his leading disciples as the high-water 
mark of his genius, and the richest outcome of 
his twenty-seven years of experience as an edu- 
cator. It should be the guide of every mother 
who aspires to do what is best for her children. 
It should be the favorite picture and song book 
in every nursery. It should be the beacon light 
by which each kindergartner directs her course. 
It should be the beating heart of every kinder- 

* Cited in the English translation of Froebel's Letters, Emily 
Michaelis and H. Keatley Moore. 



164 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

garten. It should be the center around whicli 
revolve all the concentric circles of kindergarten 
activity. It should be the most important study- 
in every kindergarten normal class. Only by 
such varied use and application will its secret be 
learned, and the world come to understand the 
full meaning of the cry which fifty years ago 
rang out from the depths of the Thuringian 
forest : 

" Come, let us live with our children." 



VII. 
PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 



" The sun is fixed, 
And the infinite magnificence of heaven 
Fixed, within reach of every human eye ; 
The sleepless ocean munnurs for all ears ; 
The vernal field infuses fresh delight 
Into all liearts. Throughout the world of sense, 
Even as an object is sublime or fair. 
That object is laid open to the view 
Without reserve or veil ; and as a power 
Is salutary, or an infiuence sweet, 
Are each and all enabled to perceive 
That power, that influence, by impartial law. 
Gifts nobler are vouchsafed alike to all ; 
Keason and, with that reason, smiles and tears ; 
Imagination, freedom of the will ; 
Conscience to guide and check ; and death to bo 
Foretasted, immortality conceived 
By all — a blissful immortality, 
To them whose holiness on earth shall make 
The spirit capable of heaven, assured. 
Strange, then, nor less than monstrous might be deemed 
The failure, if the Almiglity, to this point 
Liberal and undistinguishing, should hide 
The excellence of moral qualities 
From common understanding ; leaving truth 
And virtue difficult, abstruse, and dark ; 
Hard to be won, and only by a few ; 
Strange, should he deal herein with nice respects, 
And frustrate all the rest ! Believe it not : 
The primal duties shine aloft, like stars ; 
The charities that soothe, and heal, and bless, 
Are scattered at the feet of man, like flowers, 
The generous inclination, the just rule, 
Kind wishes, and good actions and pure thoughts. 
No mystery is here ! Here is no boon 
For high, yet not for low ; for proudly graced, 
Yet not for meek of heart. The smoke ascends 
To heaven as lightly from the cottage-hearth 
As from the haughtiest palace. He whose soul 
Ponders this true equality, may walk 
The fields of earth witli gratitude and hope." 

The Excursion^ Book IX, Wordsworth. 



CHAPTER VII. 

PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 

Two distinct and even antagonistic views with 
regard to the purpose of the kindergarten games 
seem to be more or less clearly shaj^ing themselves 
in the consciousness of practical kindergartners, 
and to be finding expression in the works of 
Froebel's interpreters and critics. Of these con- 
flicting views one holds that the seed-thought of 
the Mother-Play is the dramatic reproduction of 
each child's daily experiences, and that therefore 
the plays suggested by Froebel must be changed 
whenever the circumstances and surroundings of 
the child are changed ; the other insists that the 
procreant idea of Froebel's games is that of ac- 
centuating and interpreting pattern experiences, 
and that the actual supply of such experiences 
is an essential part of the duty of mothers and 
kindergartners. 

The theory of adaptive modification has been 
so clearly stated by Mr. Courthope Bowen in his 
helpful book, Froebel and Education by Self- 



168 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Activity, that I can not do better than quote his 
words : 

" The Mutter- und Koselieder was collected 
and composed and organized some fifty years 
ago for little German children — mainly those 
who were surrounded with country sights and 
sounds and occupations. A very small amount 
of consideration will show that for little English 
or American children — especially when they live 
in cities — something different will be required if 
a similar effect is to be produced. We shall 
require what is English or American, or what 
has become such. All of physical nature, of 
the country, that we can actually bring into the 
cities, that we can place and keep within the 
sight and touch of children, we should of course 
use freely. For the rest, we must draw upon the 
children's homes, and upon the actual life by 
which they are surrounded. To do otherwise is 
to break at once with Proebel. For these little 
city children we should not tell of The Fish in 
the Brook, but of The Sparrow in the Street ; not 
of The Nest with its Birdlings, but of The Cat 
and her Kittens ; not of The Charcoal Burner, 
but of The Costermonger, The Cabman, The 
Newspaper Boy, The Watercress Woman ; not of 
The Wolf and the Boar, but of The Dog ; and even 
instead of playing at Mowing the Grass, it would 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 1G9 

be better for these little city children to play at 
sweeping the room." 

No disciple of Froebel will deny that the 
actual experience of the child should furnish 
the incitement for his plays, and Mr. Bowen 
merits our gratitude for his emphatic statement 
of this cardinal point. In my judgment, how- 
ever, he errs in insisting that the kindergarten 
games should reproduce only literal and custom- 
ary experiences, and in his suggestion that Ger- 
man and English children, city children and 
country children, rich children and poor children, 
should have wholly different plays. In oppo- 
sition to this view, I hold that Froebel's games 
dramatize ideal experiences which all children 
may and ought to have, and that consequently 
they should be played by children of all nations 
and all conditions in life. To these universal 
plays may be added those which throw into relief 
the salient experiences of children in particular 
localities, and, as I have already suggested, each 
mother may dramatize for her own child those 
events of his life whose influence she wishes to 
deepen and perpetuate.* 

* I do not mean to imply that there should be a rigid adher- 
ence to the words, music, or gestures suggested by Froebel, but 
only that we should in general conform to the subjects he has 
indicated. My difference from Mr. Bowen will perhaps be best 
shown by considering the substitutes he proposes for some of 



170 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

The theory that the kindergarten games should 
reproduce only literal and habitual experiences 
involves those who try to carry it out in practice 
in endless difficulties. Will any one contend that 

Proebel's games. I readily admit that if the child had never 
seen a fish it might be well to substitute for the game of the 
fishes that of the flying bird, for the idea which this game em- 
bodies is simply that of free activity in a pure element, and 
Froebel himself in his commentary illustrates both by birds 
and fishes. I also agree with Mr. Bowen, that if it were impos- 
sible to take the child into the country or to show him different 
kinds of birds' nests, it might be well to substitute The Cat and 
her Kittens for The Bird and her Nestlings, though in the case 
of birds we have far more tender and more varied illustrations 
of mother love and care. I should, however, not admit that the 
dog could be substituted for the wolf, since the idea in the 
game of the wolf is the destruction of savage and the protec- 
tion of domestic animals. Neither should I concede that such 
a play as Sweeping the Room could be compared with that of 
Mowing Grass, for the one represents a menial and unrelated 
activity, while the other dramatizes a sequence of acts and stirs 
the sense of social dependence. 

That Froebel intended in his plays to embody what I have 
called typical or pattern experiences is evident from many pas- 
sages in his writings. The following extract from a letter to 
Mrs. Schmidt will perhaps be sufficient to convince the reader 
that in the pursuance of this aim he was guided not by a blind 
impulse but by a clear insight: 

" MucH-ESTEEMEU AND Dear Cousin : At last I am able to 
reply to your kind letter of the 7th inst. Permit me to an- 
swer you clause by clause. I. ' Often and often,' so you say, 
* passages which I read in the Sunday Journal evoke from the 
depths of my inner consciousness like thoughts which I have 
originated for myself, and like experiences which I have gone 
through in my own life, until I grow quite astonished and 
puzzled.' What you thus confide to me relates to one part of 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 171 

for the cliildren in orphan asylums we should 
omit all family plaj'^s ? In a kindergarten for the 
blind must we weed out such plays as the Flying 
Bird and the Swift-darting Fish ; or admit that 

the sweetest, best, and purest fruit of my life ; one part, namely, 
of what I mean to do, or have ah-eady accomplished (through 
my children's games and occupations), toward clearing a path- 
way through the tangles of human life. I am endeavoring to 
bring man, through the knowledge of his own inner feelings 
and the experiences of his own life, to a forcfecling, a percep- 
tion, and finally a clear consciousness, of this great fact — that 
for all the important needs of life, and for the deepest concep- 
tions that govern life, there exist universally applicable life 
experiences and examples which are found to be repeated in 
the case of every man who examines the development of his 
own career with careful scrutiny and endeavors to bring him- 
self to a consciousness of its meaning." — FrocheVs Letters On 
the Kindergarte7i, translated by Emily Michaelis a?wZ II. 
Keatley 3Ioore, p. 96. 

It is also evident, both from certain of Froebel's games and 
from his own definite statements, that while he intended his 
plays to be in general connected with life experiences, lie by no 
means rigidly excluded the representation of unfamiliar objects 
or activities, but held that occasionally games and pictures 
might anticipate experience. For example, most of the chil- 
dren for whom ho wrote had probably never seen living wolves. 
The following passage from the Pedagogics of the Kindergarten 
leaves no doubt as to his own opinion on this point : 

" The second remark is, that objects are here brought before 
the child which indeed the playing adult has seen, but which as 
yet the playing child has not seen at all. Though this is not to 
be anxiously avoided, as little is it to be thoughtlessly carried 
too far; kept within right limits, it justifies itself to any simple 
and straightforward mind. The life and tlie course of develop- 
ment of the human being and the laws of this development 
make this procedure recurrent with the most developed man ; 
13 



172 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

the representation of these activities may waken 
in sightless children a faint reflection of the joy 
with which seeing children watch the actual fish 
and bird ? For the children of the slums must 

for as man is a being destined to attain increasing conscious- 
ness, so is he also to become and be a judging and reasoning 
being. Besides, man has a peculiar presaging power of imagi- 
nation, as indeed also, what must never be forgotten, but always 
kept in view as important and guiding — the newborn child is 
not subsequently a man, but the man already appears, and in- 
deed is in the child with all his qualities and the unity of his 
nature. 

"Objects not yet seen in life by the child may therefore 
be introduced to him through word and representation, but 
with the following restriction : The introduction (as, for exam- 
ple, in the preceding pages that of the squirrel) must not take 
place until the child, through frequent representation of the 
activity of a familiar object, has identified and classified such 
object through its activity. To illustrate: The child has often 
seen and may continue to see a kitten ; he represents with his 
ball the act of springing, and identifies the kitten as a springing 
animal. He also recognizes the kitten in the springing ball. 
Subsequently he observes the climbing of the kitten, and repre- 
sents this with the ball. lie has now identified the kitten, as a 
living thing that springs and climbs. When, therefore, he is 
told that the squirrel climbs, he quickly comes to the conclu- 
sion that the sqtiirrel is a living thing that climbs. This is 
enough to excite his attention and justify his representation 
of the squirrel's activity. When later he sees a squirrel and it 
is named to him, he fixes his eyes upon it sharply, perhaps 
without even hearing its name, recognizes it through its climb- 
ing and other possil>le connections with known animals. This 
is a suflicient justification for the childlike and motherly pro- 
cedure we have been considering." — Pedagogics of the Kinder- 
garten, translated by Josephine Jar vis (vol. xxvii, International 
Education Series). 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 173 

we invent games reproducing their daily sur- 
roundings; or try by excursions into the coun- 
try, and by the representation of typical scenes 
from the world of nature and the world of man, 
to withdraw their minds from the dwarfing and 
distorting conditions of their own lives ? 

A cursory glance at the games contained in 
the Mother-Play will show that in general they 
embody experiences which it is easy to sup- 
ply to children the world over. An occasional 
morning spent in the country will furnish in- 
citement for all the nature plays. For the 
family, state, and church plays the ordinary ex- 
periences of child-life give sufficient occasion. 
Visits to the farmer, miller, baker, carpenter, 
joiner, and wheelwright will supply the point of 
departure for the labor plays. The recurrent 
reproduction of these typical experiences will 
cause them to stand out clearly and strongly in 
the child's consciousness and give them a deter- 
mining power upon his character, while con- 
versely evil and painful experiences, if not dwelt 
upon by the imagination, tend gradually to retire 
into the background of the mind. " Without ob- 
livion there is no remembrance possible." Is it 
not the capital power of thought that it can 
single out of the complex of life illuminating 
and educative experiences, and refuse its at- 



174 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

tention to what is arbitrary, unessential, or de- 
praving ? 

It is important in this connection to remember 
that in Froebel's view one great duty of mothers 
and kindergartners is to introduce children to the 
society of nature. " Out-of-door life/' ho declares 
in the Education of Man, "is particularly desir- 
able for the young ; it develops, strengthens, ele- 
vates, and ennobles. It imparts life and a higher 
significance to all things. For this reason short 
excursions and walks are excellent educational 
means, and to be highly esteemed even in tho 
beginning of boy and school life." * And again : 
"Man, particularly in boyhood, should become 
intimate with Nature, not so much with refer- 
ence to the details and the outer forms of her 
phenomena, as with reference to the Spirit of 
God that lives in her and rules over her. Indeed, 
tho boy feels this deeply and demands it ; for this 
reason, where love of nature is still unimpaired, 
nothing perhaps unites teachers and pupils so 
intimately as tho thoughtful study of nature and 
of the objects of nature. 

" Parents and teachers should remember this, 
and the latter should, at least once a iveek, take 
a walk with each class — not driving them out 
like a flock of sheep, nor leading them out like 

* Education of Man, Ilailraann's translation, p. 309. 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 175 

a company of soldiers, but going with them as a 
father with his sons or a brother with his broth- 
ers, and acquainting them more fully with what- 
ever the season or Nature offers them." * 

The nature plays in our kindergartens lose 
much of their spirit and value because we fail 
to connect them with the objects, actions, and 
events which it is their function to interpret. 
Emerson chides us for "filling the hands and 
nurseries of our children with all manner of 
dolls, drums, and horses, and withdrawing their 
eyes from the plain face and sufficing objects 
of nature — the sun and moon, the animals, the 
water, and stones which should be their toys." 
Let us not continue to deserve this reproach, 
but begin at once to bless the child with the 
sweet influences of earth and air and sky. Grant 
him the joy of roaming the fields, of finding the 
early violet, of weaving daisy chains and lark- 
spur wreaths, of making burdock baskets and 
fir-twig furniture, and acorn cups and thistle 
balls. Show him how to plant seed, and amaze 
his unaccustomed soul with the miracle of 
growth. Let him know the thrill of awe which 
accompanies the peep into a bird's nest. Teach 
him {p observe the strange metamorphoses of 
insects. Give him occasion to study the animals 

* Education of Man, p. 163. 



176 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

in their native haunts, and incite him to distin- 
guish animals of the field and the woods, aquatic, 
amphibious, and aerial animals. Explain to him 
how the abode and food of animals affect their 
color and form, and open his eyes to that won- 
derful mimicry through which birds and insects 
protect themselves and their young. Make him 
notice how some plants love to bask in the sun- 
shine, others to hide in the shade ; how some 
need a dry, sandy soil, some flourish in the 
marsh, while still others are parasites and de- 
pend both for support and food upon their 
stronger neighbors. Stir his imagination with 
the poetry of forest life, and let him experience 
that sense of mystery and awe which steals over 
the soul of the solitary wanderer in the depths of 
the woods. Make him know the great god Pan. 
As he grows older, let him climb high hills and 
see as a whole the landscape which he has hith- 
erto known only in fragments. Let him follow 
the windings of a brook, and be stirred by its 
suggestion of whence and whither. Satisfy the 
mystic longing which impels him to seek his 
own reflection in pond and stream, and makes 
him hearken with such delight to the echoes of 
his voice ringing from rocks and woods. Let 
him watch the shifting figures of the clouds; 
gaze into fathomless depths of blue sky; know 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 177 

the upward leap of heart which comes from the 
sight of the rainbow ; behold the sunrise and the 
sunset ; count the stars as they shine forth one 
by one out of the gathering dark, and feel those 
rising tides of the spirit which obey the attrac- 
tion of the moon. Do you imagine that these 
things are unimportant ? Then go yourself to 
the poets, and learn from them that the life 
"which sleeps in the plant and dreams in the 
animal is one with the life that wakes in man " ; 
that the evanescent is the parable of the perma- 
nent ; and that the forms and metamorphoses of 
nature are but vanishing symbols of the forms 
and metamorphoses of mind. 

Himself a poet, though he lacks the gift of 
song, Froebel seizes by instinct the typical aspects 
of nature and presents them sympathetically to 
the imagination of the child. Nature is the foe 
man must subdue ; the servant he must protect ; 
the companion he must cherish ; the inferior life 
which he must foster and develop ; the material 
he must transform ; the symbol he must inter- 
pret ; the bewildering variety which he must re- 
duce to unity through the discovery of processes, 
laws, and principles. To awaken in the child a 
presentiment of his true relationship to nature 
means to arouse in him the feelings which are 
germinal responses to the duties enumerated. 



178 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Hence we find Froebel calling attention to the 
subjugation of nature in such plays as The 
Wolf and the Wild Boar; to the protection of 
domestic animals in the game of The Barnyard ; 
to the nurture of plants in The Little Gardener ; 
to the companionship of nature in the play 
Beckoning the Chickens ; to the transformation 
of material in such games as The Carpenter 
and Charcoal Burner ; to the great symbols con- 
secrated by the imagination of the race in The 
Flying Bird, The Weathervane, and the Light- 
Songs; to the crude beginnings of a scientific 
interpretation of nature in the games dealing 
with form and number, in the gifts and occu- 
pations whose basis is mathematical, and one 
of whose objects is the unification of nature 
through the discovery of her geometric arche- 
types, and finally through games such as The 
Bird's Nest, wherein the particular object is con- 
sidered with reference to its spatial environment ; 
games like All Gone, Grass-mowing, The Baker 
and the Farmer, wherein the object is considered 
with reference to its temporal antecedents; and 
games like The Weathervane, which throw into 
relief the idea of cause by tracing a variety of 
visible phenomena to the agency of a single in- 
visible force. 

Ascending from the life of nature to the life 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 179 

of man, tlio kindergarten games image in sym- 
bolic form the great institutions of humanity — 
the family, civil society, the state, and the church. 
That all children form some rudimentary idea 
of these great institutions is indubitable. That 
their future well-being and usefulness depend in 
large measure upon the kind of idea they form 
is undeniable. That Froebel is the first educa- 
tor who has consciously and systematically en- 
deavored to abet the process by which fantasy 
generates ethical ideals constitutes one of his 
greatest claims on our gratitude. Who shall say 
how much of the anarchy which with Caliban 
scouts and flouts all law in the name of freedom 
— how much of the selfishness which with Pistol 
declares "the world is mine oyster " — how much 
of the atheism which scoffs at God, at immor- 
tality, and at moral responsibility, is born of our 
failure to influence the imagination of childhood 
with the ideals incarnate in the institutions of 
society ? " Of this thing," says wise Herr Teu- 
f olsdrockh, " be certain : wouldst thou plant for 
eternity ? then plant into the deep infinite facul- 
ties of man, his fantasy and heart. Wouldst thou 
plant for year and day ? then plant into his shal- 
low, superficial faculties, his self-love, and arith- 
metical understanding, what will grow there." 
Each man has two selves. These two selves 



180 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

are familiar to us under many different names : 
savage man and civilized man ; isolated man and 
social man ; carnal man and spiritual man ; natu- 
ral man and ideal man ; atomic man and generic 
man ; the first man, who is of the earth, earthy ; 
the second man, who is the Lord from heaven. 
Such are a few of the contrasting appellations 
under which language has striven to articulate 
an idea which in some form makes itself known 
to every thinking mind. 

The institutions of society derive their great- 
est significance from the fact that they embody 
and reveal generic selfhood. The final test of 
any system of education, therefore, must be its 
ability to waken in the mind of its pupils the 
ethical ideals of which social institutions are the 
incarnation. The battle between the particular 
man and the universal man is inevitable. The 
only question is, Shall it be fought out in the 
world, or in the soul ? Shall the puny individual 
defy the external embodiments of his own ideal 
nature and perish in the collision with these 
substantial powers ? Shall his life be a tragedy, 
or a divine comedy, in whose course he rises out 
of the inferno of selfishness, and through the pur- 
gatorial discipline of visible institutions ascends 
into the communion of the invisible Church ? 
Surely there can be but one answer to these ques- 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 181 

tions, and when wo have learned to put tliem we 
have ])egun to realize the importance of that 
active membership in the universal life which 
transmutes external restraint into internal in- 
citement, and purifies the passion for rule into 
the passion for service. 

The influence of the long period of feeble ado- 
lescence upon the historic development of man- 
kind has of late years been much insisted upon 
by thoughtful evolutionists. The helplessness of 
infancy created the family, and from this rudi- 
mentary germ all the more complex social organ- 
isms have been evolved. The subordination of 
individual caprice and selfishness to the interest 
of the family -whole generated the altruistic 
ideal. The plasticity of infancy made possible 
the molding influence of family habits and tra- 
ditions, and education began to be. Finally, the 
acquisition of the mother-tongue lifted each new- 
born individual out of his mere atomic selfhood, 
and prepared him to avail himself of the experi- 
ence of his fellow-men. 

The history of the individual repeats that of 
the race, and upon family nurture will always 
depend in large measure the weal or woe of life. 
What, then, must we think of that dominant and 
despotic infant who, by cries and caresses, by 
threats and cajolery, enslaves parents, grandpar- 



182 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

ents, friends, and domestics, and makes himself 
the autocrat of so many homes ? Of all forms of 
despotism this is the worst for the despot him- 
self, since it alone grants power without corre- 
sponding responsibility. We can not abolish it by 
simply insisting upon the surrender of self-will, 
for coercion of the will, in its reaction, produces 
evils greater than those it seeks to cure. We 
must illuminate the imagination of the child 
with ideals of love and gratitude and service, and 
stir his soul with premonitions of the beauty and 
sanctity of family life. 

To accomplish this result is the aim of Froebel 
in his family plays. In the order of these plays 
we observe that the first relationship objectified 
is that of mother and child ; then follow games 
depicting the relationship to father, brothers, 
sisters, and grandparents. Most important of 
all is the fact that the family is presented as a 
spiritual whole enveloping and fostering the life 
of the individual ; " for where wholeness is," says 
Froebel, " there is life, or at least the germ of 
life ; where division is, though it be only halfness, 
there is death, or at least the germ of death." 
Finally, there is hinted the response which the 
fostered should make to the fostering life, and 
in a number of little games is reflected, as in a 
mirror, the image of the active child, always busy 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 183 

in work or play ; the orderly child, prompt to 
obey the voice of the clock ; the pure and open- 
hearted child, who shuns all secret ways and 
words ; the sympathetic child, to whom no joy is 
perfect unless shared with others; the loving 
child, eager to render service and give pleasure ; 
in a word, the good child, whom all men love, 
and whom father and mother love most of all. 

Few problems are more difficult to solve than 
that of the good which man must do, as related 
to the freedom with which it must be done. 
Failure to conform to the ideal pattern of hu- 
manity means failure to create character. Yet 
external compulsion can not form nor mere un- 
conscious habit fix the will, and too often en- 
forced obedience, recoiling, produces boundless 
caprice. 

Theories of moral training vibrate between 
the equally pernicious extremes of coercion and 
feeble indulgence, because thought oscillates be- 
between the perceived necessity of doing riglit 
and the instinctive sense that virtue implies vol- 
untary choice, and that power to choose aright 
can only be developed by long exercise in riglit 
choosing. It seems at times that by a slow inver- 
sion the outward may become an inward " must," 
and the imperative of external command melt 
imperceptibly into the imperative of conscience. 



184 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Influenced by this latent assumption we make 
much of formal obedience, and expect that by 
some subtle process of moral alchemy mechan- 
ical habit may be transmuted into spontaneous 
energy. In the recoil from this view arises the 
conviction that external drill and discipline tend 
not to fashion the will, but either to break or 
stiffen it, and with a burning feeling of the 
sanctity of the individual soul we denounce the 
outer compulsion which cramps, fetters, and de- 
stroys the free energy of spirit. 

Froebel has endeavored to solve this moral 
contradiction in the plays wherein he leads the 
child to picture ideal childhood. Representing 
to ourselves what we ought to be is the prelimi- 
nary of being what we ought. We form char- 
acter by progressively canceling natural defect, 
and we are incited to the effort that overcomes 
by vision of the good to be achieved. The merit 
of Froebel's plays is that they insinuate truth 
into the mind without arousing antagonism to it. 
Hence its beauty is felt before its constraint ; it 
allures before it commands or threatens; and 
with heart inflamed by the vision of the ideal the 
child becomes a law unto himself before law is 
externally revealed as binding upon him. 

The organizing principle of industrial life is 
the division of labor. This principle demands 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 185 

that eacli man shall restrict himself to a particu- 
lar calling, and in this calling work directly for 
others and only indirectly for himself. On the 
other hand, it enables each man to profit by the 
labor of all men, and applies the strength of uni- 
versal, endeavor to the supply of individual need. 
Out of this reciprocal relation of each to all and 
all to each arise the sense of social dependence 
and the feeling of personal responsibility; and 
these in turn give birth to the virtues of industry, 
punctuality, kindliness, and courtesy. In a word, 
the institution of civil society raises the ac- 
tivity which supplies material needs into the 
spiritual realm and causes it to take on the form 
of participation characteristic of all spiritual 
energies. 

The aim of the labor plays is to stir in the 
child's mind some presentiment of the beauty of 
universal service, some sense of his own obliga- 
tion to serve. In pursuit of this aim Froebel 
leads him from the objects of daily use and com- 
fort back to the activities which they imply. 
How shall the child think of his food, his cloth- 
ing, and the house which shelters him ? Shall he 
think them only as related to his own need or 
pleasure, and thus foster his inborn selfishness ? 
Shall he be taught in vague general terms that 
he has all these good things because God gives 



186 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

them to liim, or because his father works for 
them ; or shall he bo led to realize in some meas- 
ure the varied activities which must concur in 
the production of the simplest objects, and thus 
be brought to a more conscious sense of his 
dependence upon nature, upon man, and upon 
God ? In the games of The Grass-mowing and 
The Baker, Froebel clearly indicates his own be- 
lief that children should bo led to conceive all 
j)articular things as results of active processes, 
and teaches us that the first step toward the 
formation of such a habit of thought is the 
dramatic representation of the simple activities 
which lie back of the commonest objects. In his 
view, an isolated fact is a dead fact ; grasped in 
its total process it is a living and life-giving fact. 
Thus the cup of milk is a dead fact, but it is 
made alive by leading the child to represent how 
Mollie milks the cow, how Peter mows the grass 
in the meadow and gives it to the cow for food, 
and how upon the growing grass the sun must 
shine and the rain fall. The slice of bread, too, 
takes on a deeper meaning when its genesis is 
traced through the baker, the miller, and the 
farmer to the wheat planted in the earth, and, 
like the grass, quickened by the sunshine and fed 
by the showers. The final question comes of 
itself. Hath the rain a father ? or who hath be- 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 187 

gotten tlie drops of dew ? Thus man's daily food 
testifies forever to the living bread wliich satis- 
fies all hunger, and his drink to that wondrous 
well which shall spring up within him into ever- 
lasting life. 

Twin-born out of the recognition that all 
things are working together for him, spring into 
life the child's gratitude and his sense of respon- 
sibility. For this universal service shall not his 
heart return love and thanks ? In a world where 
all things work, shall he alone be idle ? Froebel 
merely teaches him how to utter his own feeling 
when he bids him thank Peter for the mowing, 
Mollie for the milking, and the cow for the milk. 
He is only responding to the child's aroused in- 
stinct, when in the game of The Baker he urges 
him to make ready the cake for the oven, and 
encourages him to feel that he is one of the links 
in that living chain of activity which girdles the 
world. Where many work together each must 
do his part promptly ; therefore, "Be ready, child, 
with your cake, for the baker is calling : 

" ' Bring the little cake to me, 
Soon ray oven cold will be.' " 

Having pictured the activities upon which 

the child depends for food, Froebel passes to 

the activities on which he depends for shelter. 

*' See the carpenter," begins his new song ; " all 
14 



188 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

day lie works away ; he makes the high low ; the 
curved, flat; the long, short; and the rough, 
smooth/* Singing these words the child repre- 
sents the cutting down of the tree, and the 
change of the cylindrical log into the flat board, 
which is then shortened and planed. The raw 
material of nature being at last completely trans- 
formed, the song advances to the suggestion that 
the planed boards be put together to make a 
house : 

" Now all must be combined, 
All parts together joined. 
Just sec what the carpenter shows I 
From timbers the house now grows." 

Nor is this all : the house is for the father, 
mother, and child ; it is, as Froebol himself else- 
where declares, " that body of the family which 
protects its soul " ; not a house merely, but a 
home ; the shield of family sanctity, the guardian 
of family love. So in its varied forms as manu- 
factory, store, statehouse, and church, the house 
is the symbol and shelter of the spiritual ideals 
of civil society, national unity, and religious 
worship. These larger houses correspond to 
man's larger selves, and prophesy the "house 
not made with hands, eternal in the heavens " — 
that everlasting home which shall shelter im- 
mortal life. 

To the games of The Grass-Mowing, Baker, and 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 189 

Carpenter, Froebel adds those of The Joiner, The 
Wheelwright, and The Charcoal Burner. In the 
portrayal of these different industries the kinder- 
gartner should follow one simple plan. She must 
first connect the particular activity represented 
with some essential need of the child ; then show 
its relationship to other industries and its depend- 
ence upon nature ; and, last of all, suggest the 
spiritual ideal which is its final cause or motive. 
The child readily understands that without the 
joiner he would lack furniture ; without coal his 
house could not be warmed or his food cooked ; 
without the wheel there could be no cart or car- 
riage, no mills for grinding flour or sawing wood, 
no locomotives, and no ships. The final aim of 
all labor may also be readily indicated. Why is 
the child housed, fed, warmed, and transported 
from place to place ? Is it not that he may be 
given opportunity for spiritual growth and un- 
folding ? Or, varying the question. Why does 
each man work in some particular calling ? Is it 
not that he may on the one hand make himself 
" a worthy instrument of the universal life," and 
on the other that in " the one thing he does right- 
ly he may behold the semblance of all that is 
rightly done" ? 

The picture which Froebel presents of indus- 
trial life is weakened by the addition of plays 



190 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

portraying either menial employments or those 
which minister to accidental or artificial needs. 
Thus, to substitute for the charcoal burner, or his 
English and American equivalent the coal miner, 
such personages as the water-cress woman, the 
costermonger, or the cabman, is entirely to miss 
the idea which this game embodies. The thought 
Froebel wishes to make prominent in the char- 
coal burner is the dignity of labor ; hence, he 
purposely chooses for his hero one whose humble 
station contrasts strikingly with his economic 
importance. Like Carlyle, he is celebrating " the 
toil-worn craftsman that with earth-made imple- 
ment laboriously conquers the earth and makes 
her man's " ; and he would have the child feel that 
" for him was this brother's back so bent and his 
straight limbs and fingers so deformed." Our la- 
bor games should represent only the real heroes of 
toil. Little Scissors-Grinders, Little Bootblacks, 
and Little Waiters may therefore with advantage 
be excluded from our kindergartens ; and I, for 
one, heartily disagree with the sentiment that 
the kindergartener should endeavor to make even 
the garbage cart poetic. 

Those disciples of Froebel who believe that he 
held the Pestalozzian doctrine that all elemen- 
tary instruction should be addressed to sense-per- 
ception will do well to consider carefully his 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 191 

practical procedure as illustrated in the labor 
plays. So far was Froebel from the thought that 
all knowledge is derived from sense-perception, 
that one may say his whole aim is to lead the 
pupil from the immediate object of sense back- s^' 
ward to its producing cause and forward to its 
ideal aim. We do not get at any true reality 
in sense-perception, for the perceived object ex- 
presses merely a temporary equilibrium between 
a regressive and progressive series of activities. 
Hence, objects can be explained only in terms of 
force. In like manner particular events must be 
interpreted by relating them to the past events 
upon which they depend and the future events 
toward which they point. 

We must purge our minds of the superstition 
that thought is a kind of etherealized sense-per- 
ception. Thought deals not with things, but with 
the energies that originate and destroy things. 
The child's incessant " Why ? " shows us that he 
can not rest in mere sense-perception. His delight 
in such stories as The House that Jack Built, The 
Strange Adventures of Henny Penny, and the sad 
experiences of The Old Woman and her Pig, is 
explained by the fact that in these tales he con- 
templates a series of apparently related events. 
The great duty of education is to teach the path 
of ascent from facts to causes, and to draw around 



192 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

each circle of causal process the wider circle in 
which it is included. 

The Mother-Play contains no play symboliz- 
ing the State, but since games of this kind are 
justified by the instinct of childhood, the gen- 
eral thought of Froebel, and the traditional prac- 
tice of the kindergarten, they may fitly be con- 
sidered in this chapter. The State orders and 
protects the other institutions of society, and 
upon its existence depend that participation of 
each in the labor of all which is the condition 
of material prosperity and that participation of 
each in the experience of all which is the condi- 
tion of spiritual growth. As the incarnation of 
man's colossal selfhood, the state rightfully de- 
mands absolute allegiance, and he is no true pa- 
triot who will not freely surrender all things, and 
even life itself, for his country. Therefore the 
soldier is the truest symbol of the state, and pa- 
triotic feeling is most easily stirred in the hearts 
of young children by allowing them to represent 
soldiers. Marching with drums and flags to the 
music of national airs should be an occasional 
exercise in all kindergartens, and the distinctive 
feature of the programme on all anniversaries of 
important events in the nation's history. 

The objection to soldier games rests upon a 
mistake as to their symbolic significance, and to 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 193 

their association with the cruelty of war rather 
than with the heroism, of patriotic self-sacrifice. 
The child mind knows not the horrors but the 
poetry of battle; the heart of the boy soldier 
thrills not with the idea of killing others, but 
with the lofty feeling that he, too, may be counted 
worthy to die for the state. 

As the children mature they should be told of 
the exploits of national heroes, should learn pa- 
triotic poems, should see national monuments, and 
participate in the celebration of national holi- 
days. Above all, they should from time to time 
see a statehouse or a good picture of one. The 
domes of these great buildings are architectural 
symbols of the idea of justice, which, like the 
blue vault of heaven, bends equally over all ; and 
whoever will recall the influence of such build- 
ings upon his childish imagination may assure 
himself of their power to waken a predictive 
consciousness of the truth they embody. 

The early development of patriotic feeling, 
important for all children, is especially important 
for the children of America. Our Anglo-Saxon 
impulse is to insist that the individual shall 
share the energies of the state, and our proudest 
boast is that we live under a government "of the 
people, by the people, and for the people." On 
the other hand, we lack that instinct of race 



194 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

wMch intensifies the passion of patriotism ; nei- 
ther have we those traditions of a long historic 
past which give sanctity to the customs and ob- 
servances of the present. In onr country all 
races meet and all the different streams of history 
and tradition mingle. There is danger that our 
wide tolerance may degenerate into indifference ; 
that we shall become cosmopolitan at the expense 
of our patriotism ; and that while loudly claim- 
ing the right of self-government we shall grow 
increasingly oblivious of the duties of citizenship. 
We should therefore welcome every influence, 
however small, which helps to stir the depths 
of patriotic feeling and quicken the sense of 
patriotic obligation.* 

The careful student of the nursery songs will 
observe that alike through the plays which deal 
primarily with nature and through those which 
deal primarily with human relationships Froebel 
is forever suggesting, symbolizing, adumbrating 
the child's relationship to God. Thus the song 

* The reader may be interested to recall Dante's description 
of the Florentine mothers relating to their little ones legends 
of the heroic past : 

" One o'er the cradle kept her studious watch, 
And in her lullaby the language used 
That first delights the fathers and the mothers ; 
Another, drawing tresses from her distaff, 
Told o'er among her family the tales 
Of Trojans, and of Fesolo and Rome." ' 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 195 

of The Bird's Nest points first to mother-love as 
shown in nature, next to human motherliood, 
and finally to the fostering care and tenderness 
of Him who is of all mother-love the source and 
original. In like manner, the Wind-Song ad- 
vances from the child's consciousness of an un- 
seen energy in himself to the recognition of an 
unseen energy in nature, and from this to a fore- 
gleam of the truth that in the unseen God all 
things live and move and have their being. The 
Light-Songs illustrate the influence of the uni- 
versal upon the particular, and are thus symbolic 
of the truth that the soul lives only as it reflects 
the life of God. The labor plays move from 
some object which supplies an essential need to 
the human industries, and natural forces con- 
cerned in its production, and this sequence of 
activities points to a source of all activity. The 
three Songs of the Knights, in which the hero of 
the child's dreams passes judgment upon him, 
arouse conscience and reveal the God who speaks 
in her still small voice. Last of all, God is made 
known in the visible institution, whose mission 
is to hold up the Divine Ideal as the object of 
adoration and worship, and as the final cause and 
explanation of the world. 

That this method of developing religious 
ideals is the true one, wo may infer both from 



196 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

its correspondence with the order of their his- 
toric unfolding and from the fact that our own 
thoughts of God are shaped and guided by the 
analogies under which he is made known to us 
in our holy books. God is light. His spirit, like 
the wind, bloweth where it listeth. As the eagle 
fluttereth over her young and beareth them, so 
the Lord beareth his servant. The mother may 
forget her nursing child, yet will not God for- 
get his own. God is a shepherd, a husbandman, 
a judge, a king. The Son of God is our elder 
brother, our friend, the bridegroom of the 
Church; the ideal warrior or knight, who sits 
upon a white horse and whose name is Faithful 
and True. These images consecrate nature 
and human relationships by declaring the ideal 
which they imply but never realize. Nature 
throws out only dark hints with regard to the 
character of God, yet there is no single class of 
natural objects before which the human heart 
has failed to bow in worship. Sun and moon, 
thunder, lightning, and wind ; mountain and 
river, beast, reptile, bird, tree, have all told men 
something of the Divine First Principle. In 
human affections God is more adequately re- 
vealed, though even in these he is still seen " as 
in a glass darkly." Among men are no perfect 
fathers, yet the ancestors of Aryan and Semitic 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 197 

peoples alike venerated tlie perfect fatherhood. 
Among women are no perfect mothers, yet ho 
whom we revere as fourth and last of the poets 
whose insight " time can not unmake," finds the 
solution of all problems in the " Ewig-Weib- 
liche." Among men are no perfect husbands, 
friends, rulers, or deliverers, yet assuredly each 
one of these relationships points to an ideal 
which it would destroy life to believe a delusion 
and a dream. 

I venture therefore to think that Froebel is 
only stating explicitly what we all implicitly be- 
lieve, when he affirms that "from every object 
in nature and life there is a way to God," * and 
when he declares that " the feeling of community 
first uniting the child with mother, father, 
brothers, sisters, and resting on a higher spirit- 
ual unity ; to which, later on, is added the dis- 
covery that father, mother, brothers, sisters, 
human beings in general, feel and know them- 
selves to be in community and unity with a 
higher principle, with humanity — with God ; this 
feeling of community is the very first germ, the 
very first beginning of all true religious spirit, 
of all genuine yearning for unhindered unifica- 
tion with the Eternal, with God." f 

* Eflucation of Man, Hailmann's translation, p. 202. 
t Ibid., p. 25. 



198 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Only by connecting it with this method of 
developing religious emotions and cispirations 
can we understand Froebel's Song of the Church. 
The heart of the child has throbbed with strange 
presentiments in presence of the church whose 
spire " like a silent finger points to heaven." He 
has heard the solemn peal of the Sabbath bells, 
and watched men and women moving in groups 
toward the sacred building. That feeling of com- 
munity which originally bound the family into a 
living whole becomes now the magnet which at- 
tracts him to the church, and inspires his de- 
light in her uncomprehended services. He un- 
derstands not a word of what is said and sung, 
yet he is happy in the assurance that a common 
thought is stirring many minds, a common feel- 
ing thrilling many hearts. Surely this common 
thought is the one thought worth thinking — the 
one truth that, could he know it, would explain 
all things to him, and make articulate the voice- 
less longing of his own soul. 

To this feeling of the child Froebol responds 
in a song pointing him to the church as the 
place where all questions are answered, all prob- 
lems solved. There he shall learn " why flowers 
bloom and birdies sing " ; " what means the feel- 
ing with which ho watches the moon, the stars, 
and the sunset glow ; why he trusts father and 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 199 

motlier; what makes the joy of Christmas day." 
lu a single word, the song of tlie Church recalls 
and interprets all the salient experiences of the 
child's soul, and " binds his days each to each by 
natural piety." 

The one great difficulty in the way of carry- 
ing out Froebel's ideal of religious development 
is our own lack of vital piety. It is easy to teach 
catechisms ; it is not easy to awaken and foster 
faith, hope, and love. Any mother may force her 
child to memorize men's definitions of God, but 
only one who has herself a filial spirit can teach 
him to know his heavenly Father. She whose 
own soul is dead may bo a religious drill ser- 
geant, but only the living spirit can communicate 
spiritual life.* 

In what depths of the soul is rooted that 
" feeling of community which attracts the child 

* Readers of Carlyle will recall the religious education of 
Oneschen : " My kind mother — for as such I must ever love the 
good Gneschen — did me one altogether invaluable service : she 
taught me, less indeed by word tlian by act and daily reverent 
use and habitude, her own simple version of the Christian faith. 
Andreas, too, attended church, yet more like a parade duty, 
for which he in the other world expected pay with arrears — as, 
I trust, he has received ; but my mother, with a true woman's 
heart and fine though uncultivated sense, was in the strictest 
acceptation religious. How indestructibly tlie good grows and 
propagates itself, even among the weedy entanglements of evil ! 
Tlie highest whom I knew on earth I hero saw bowed down, 
with awe unspeakable, before a higher in heaven. Such things, 



200 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

to the Church, we shall best understand by re- 
ferring once more to the fact that the words 
ideal and generic are but diJBferent expressions of 
one great reality. When diflEerent individuals 
are inspired by the same ideal they enter into a 
communion of thought and sympathy. That 
they can be inspired by the same ideals implies 
an original community of nature. The ideal is 
the generic in the individual, and its progressive 
recognition both emancipates man and enables 
him to recognize his own essential s.elf in all 
other men. What may be shared with all men 
is what is highest in each man. Insight into 
this truth is man's redemption from selfish indi- 
vidualism into the unity of the spirit. 

But one step remains to be taken. The reality 
of each man is his ideal nature. This ideal nature 
is universal ; it is the element in each one of us 
which unites us with others and separates us 
from our own partial and selfish selves. It is 
in us, yet not of us. It is the power in our souls 
"which always makes for righteousness." Its 
uncompromising demand is self-renunciation, its 
eternal promise self-fulfillment. In flashes of 

especially in infancy, reach inward to the very core of your 
being; mysteriously does a holy of holies build itself into visi- 
bility in the mysterious deeps; and reverence, the divinest in 
man, springs forth undying from its mean envelopment of 
fear." 



PATTERN EXPEllIENCES. 201 

insight we recognize it as tlie indwelling of the 
divine in the human, a living spirit working 
within humanity to redeem it into the image of 
God. 

In her central doctrine of the Incarnation the 
Christian Church proclaims the ideal unity of 
the human and the divine. Moreover, she iden- 
tifies the divine with the generic in her asser- 
tion that the God-man is the universal man, or, 
in other words, that Christ was not a man, but 
mankind. She affirms that " the true light light- 
eth every man that cometh into the world " ; that 
each man is a partaker of the divine nature ; 
that in Christ Jesus there is neither Jew nor 
Greek, bond nor free, male nor female ; that the 
mystery hid from ages and generations is Christ 
in man, the hope of glory. She calls upon each 
individual to renounce the carnal and put on 
the spiritual man, and she promises him that by 
meditating on her doctrines, participating in her 
prayers, her praises, and her sacraments, and 
above all by sharing her ministry to the young, 
the needy, the sorrowing, and the sinful, he shall 
learn to comprehend the divine charity, and shall 
be transfigured into its image. 

The doctrine of the Incarnation bridges the 
seemingly impassable chasm which separates the 
finite from the infinite ; " For, if the divine de- 



202 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

sconds into tho flesh, and wraps about liim the 
perishing vestures of time and space, then the ele- 
ments of time and space and the finitude of the 
human will may be receptive of tho divine."* 
The characteristic quality of God is self-impart- 
ing grace, and he can not be satisfied with giv- 
ing anything less than himself. The character- 
istic quality of man is infinite susceptibility to 
and possibility of the divine. Hence man is, as 
St. Chrysostom affirmed, the true shekinah ; and 
the Incarnation, as St. Thomas declared, " the ex- 
altation of human nature and the consummation 
of the universe." f 

He who studies tho signs of the times will 
observe that our wisest preachers are confining 
themselves more and more strictly to promul- 
gation of tho truth, that in the transcendent per- 
sonality of the historic Christ we may behold 
what God is and what man ought to be. The 
tendency of the carnal mind is to create the di- 
vine in its own image, and too often the Being 
men worship is not God, but the devil. From 
such profane and blasphemous thoughts of our 
heavenly Father we are delivered by the con- 
templation of his image in the Son of Man. 
" From the God of man's painting we turn to 

* Church Jiinl State, .1 Lecture by Dr. Harris. 
f Cited in Lux Muudi. 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 203 

the man of God's being, and he leads us to the 
true God, the radiation of whose glory we first 
see in him." Can we doubt the love of God while 
we remember the love of Jesus ? Can we fear 
that God will lose one of his little ones while we 
remember how the Good Shepherd laid down his 
life for the sheep ? On the other hand, dare we 
affirm that man is by nature weak and sinful 
when we contemplate the divine humanity ? To 
err is not human. To sin is to be less than man. 
We paralyze our consciences by our refusal to 
recognize in Jesus the one true man as well as 
the perfect image of the one true God. 

" Arise and fly 
The reeling Faun, the sensual feast ; 
Move upward, working out the beast, 
And let the ape and tiger die." 

Sacredest of all symbols is the cross, for it is 
the meeting point of divine and human self-sac- 
rifice — typifying, on the one hand, that process 
of grace through which the infinite descends into 
the finite ; and, on the other, the self-crucifixion 
through which the finite renounces its finitude 
and ascends into the infinite. It explains the 
struggle of each contrite heart. It sanctifies the 
act of every hero who dies to bless his fellow- 
men. It elevates history into a true theodicy. 

I)escendit Deus ut assurgamus ! Such is the 
15 



204 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

answer of the cross to the enigma of the Tini- 
verse.* 

It is customary among the disciples of Froebel 
to say that the Mother-Play is the point of de- 
parture for a natural system of education, be- 
cause it teaches the way in which the germs of 
character and thought may be developed. But 
what are these germs of character and thought ? 
Are they independent and manifold, or are they 
ultimately reducible to unity ? Is there any 
principle of connection among the separate vir- 
tues ? Has the activity of thought any general 
or ideal form ? Such are the questions which 
arise in our minds so soon as we seriously set 
ourselves to consider how we may nourish the 
germs of thought and character. To discover 
the answer Froebel made to them in his practical 
procedure has been my purpose in the present 
chapter. 

Having climbed by the pathway of Froebel's 
plays tc the summit of his mount of vision, we 
may perhaps understand his theoretical explana- 
tions as given in the mottoes and commentaries. 

* " That the history of the world, with all the changing 
scenes which its annals present, is the process of development 
and the realization of spirit ; this is the true Theodicsea — the 
justification of God in history." — EegeVs Philosophy of His- 
tory, p. 477. 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 205 

One great idea fires his mind — the idea that the 
conscious aim of education should be to illumi- 
nate the mind of the pupil with the vision of 
the whole, and consecrate his will with the pur- 
pose of living in and for the whole. To seek the 
tie which binds separate elements in one whole is 
the characteristic act of thought. Feeling of the 
tie which binds the individual first to the mother 
and later to the other members of the family, 
is the germ of moral character. The ascent of 
thought to higher planes of development is 
marked by the union of lesser into larger wholes 
through the discovery of causal relationship, 
while correspondingly the growth of character 
is marked by an extension of the sense of com- 
munity originally uniting the individual and the 
family to the larger social wholes, and the culti- 
vation of the specific virtues arising from these 
expanded relationships. The goal of thought is 
the discovery of a single cause capable of uniting 
and explaining all the different series of lesser 
causes ; the goal of character is the transmuta- 
tion of mere spontaneity into that rational free- 
dom which "lives resolutely in the whole, the 
good, the true." 

"With the insight that each man is ideally the / 
Cosmos, we enter the inmost sanctuary of Froe- 
bel's mind. This insight is identical with that of 



206 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Christianity. It is the star which leads whoso 
follows it to the comprehension of Occidental as 
opposed to Oriental thought. It has created the 
civilizations of Europe and America. It has in- 
spired the modern crusade against ignorance. It 
is creating the science and art of education. 
Working in the mind of Froebel, it produced 
the kindergarten and the Mother-Play. Man is 
not "the dewdrop that slips into the shining 
sea." He is the dewdrop that reflects earth and 
sky. The chief end — say rather the sole end — of 
man is to be the mirror of divine life and love. 
The duty of each individual is to see to it that 
he be not a cloudy mirror, a diminishing mirror, 
or a distorting mirror ; or, in plain words, that, 
purging his soul of passion, selfishness, and pride, 
he give back to a blessed universe its own blessed 
image.* 

* The attentive reader is doubtless already conscious of the 
fact that by a different p^th we have again arrived at Froebel's 
insight into the nature of man as Gliedgames. To this creative 
insight Froebel has given many different names, but in the 
Pedagogics of the Kindergarten he himself points out the iden- 
tity of thought under the variety of expression by calling his 
fundamental idea in one breath " the law of Opposites, the law 
of the Member-whole — the law of Mediation, the law of the 
Triune Life." Each of these expressions refers to a particular 
aspect of the general thought. Elsewhere he describes this in- 
sight as the principle of life-unity (Lebenseinheif), the process 
of life-unification (Lebenseinigung). The kindergartner whose 
inward eye has never rested upon the insight thus variously 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 207 

described may assure herself that she has no comprehension of 
Froebel, and can in no true sense call herself his disciple. 

The following extracts from the Introduction, Mottoes, and 
Commentaries of the Mother-Play will show how completely 
Froebel's mind was dominated by the idea of the "whole." 
The poems marked with a star (*) are from the translation of 
Miss Fanny Q. Dwight ; those marked with a f from the trans- 
lation of the Misses Lord : 

" Ever in relations with the child recall 
The truth, that Unity exists in all. 
Without it all thy efforts aimless are, 
Nor can the child for higher truths prepare. 
A hint of this already thou art showing 
In this pleasant little game, Grass-mowing." * 

" Though meaningless this play may seem, 
There's more in it than one might dream, 
Like the rough stone it is ; like light 
Wherein the separate hues unite ; 
Like many things in one that meet 
To make the whole complete. 
Where all the active work and skill 
Moves not by arbitrary will, 
Where exists proportion fair, 
The child must feel a beauty there. 
When all complete and polished lies, 
He feels in his heart a glad surprise. 
He feels the charm that binds in one 
The work in several parts begun. 
Behold, then, ni this little play 
A world-wide truth set free. 
Easily may a symbol teach 
What thy reason may not reach — 
Living is the perfect Whole, 
Deeper than words it moves the soul." * 

" Early the child divines aright 
That several parts in one whole unite. 
Therefore the family circle show, 
Let him every member know." * 



208 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

" Whatever singly thou hast played 
May in one charming Whole be made. 
The child alone delights to play, 
But better still with comrades gay. 
The single flower he loves to view, 
Still more the wreath of varied hue. 
In each and all the child may find 
The least within the Whole combined." * 

" Silently cherish your Baby's dim thought 

That life in itself is as Unity wrought. 
• Make paths through which he may feel and may think 

That of this great Whole he too is a link. 

Make him see inner things through outer crust. 

And to the inner not outer things trust. 

Let him feel sure, though apart things may stand, 

Life has its Unity, inner and grand ; 

That each thing, though soundless it be to the ear, 

A message can give emblematic but clear ; 

And all who will follow this language aright 

Walk a Life-pathway still, joyful, and bright." f 

" To bind together what stands apart, 
Let your child in play discover the art. 
And exercise the manly skill 
To span the space at his own will." * 

" A silent thought lies dim and hid in Baby's mind ; 
He's not alone in life ; he's one amid mankind." f 

" The smallest child a magnet in him bears 
That shows him how life binds together all." f 

" One life works in all however riven. 
Because this life to all, one God has given." f 

'* Mother, feel it deeply. One doth watch 
When all in somber night are wrapped in sleep. 
Have faith ! the good awaits thy careful search, 
Will from all fear and harm the children keep. 
Truly to them naught better canst thou give 
Than the true feeling they in One Life live." * 



PATTERN EXPERIENCES. 209 

" A human being is a living whole, inner and unbroken al- 
though connected within itself. A child knows itself first in 
this wholeness and indivisibility of essence. iL is, moreover, of 
the highest importance that he should know life first in its 
wholeness and unity. 

*' Your child, dear mother, must be recognized and tended as 
in the midst of a life that is all connected into a single whole. 

" How could our earthly life be long enough to develop our 
being with equal perfection in its all-sidedness and depth? We 
must recognize our ideal selves in the mirror of other lives. 
Through the recognition of all by each and each by all, hu- 
manity becomes the mirror of the divine. 

" To rear your child as a unity in itself, in unity with man 
and nature, but, above all, in unity with God, the Father of all 
— this, dear mother, is your highest duty, your deepest joy. 

'• The feeling of union in separation and of separation — that 
is, personality in union — is the essence of conscience. 

" Lead your child from the fact to the picture, from the pic- 
ture to the symbol, from the symbol to the grasp of the fact as 
a spiritual whole. Thus will be developed the ideas of part and 
■whole, of the individual and the universal. Educate your child 
in this manner, and at the goal of his education he will recog- 
nize himself as the living member of a living whole and will 
know that his life reflects as in a mirror — the life of his family, 
his people, humanity, the being, life, and working of God in 
all and through all, 

" To find or create a bond of union between seemingly op- 
posed and even antagonistic objects is always a beneficent deed. 
Mother, early awaken in your child the love of reconciling ac- 
tivity. Your heart teaches you what bitter pain is born of 
apparently insoluble contradictions, what joy springs out of 
unhoped-for reconciliations. . . . Therefore, identifying himself 



210 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

with the carpenter, let your child build the reconciling bridge, 
and thus through a uniting act gain his first foreboding of the 
truth that in himself through self -activity he v.ill find the solu- 
tion of all contradictions, the mediation of all apparently ir- 
reconcilable opposition. Show him this truth again in your 
own life, and above all in the mediatorial life and teaching of 
Him who on earth was the Carpenter's Son. Thus shall the 
visible bridge which the child carpenter builds be one link in 
the chain of experiences with which he spans the gulf between 
things seen and things unseen, and learns to recognize in the 
Carpenter's Son the beloved Son of God and the All-Father, the 
Mediator between him and man. 

" From the strengthening and development of body, limbs 
and senses rise to their use ; move from impressions to percep- 
tion ; from perception to attentive observation and contempla- 
tion ; from the recognition of particular objects to their rela- 
tions and dependencies ; from the healthy life of the body to the 
healthy life of the spirit ; from thought immanent in experience 
to pure thinking. Ascend thus from sensation to thought, from 
external observation to internal apprehension, from outer com- 
bination to inner synthesis ; from a formal to a vital intellectual 
grasp and so to the culture of the Understanding ; from the 
observation of phenomena to the recognition of their ground or 
cause, and hence to the development and culture of life-grasping 
Reason. By such procedure will be formed in the mind of the 
pupil at the goal of his education the transparent and clear 
soul-picture of each particular being, including himself — of the 
great Whole to which all particular beings belong as members, 
and of the truth that the particular being reflects as in a mirror 
the life of the Whole." * 

* As there exist two literal translations of the Mutter- und 
Koselieder, I have ventured to make my translations free, in 
the hope that Froebel's ideas may gain clearness thereby. 



VIII. 
VORTICAL EDUCATION. 



" I KNEW a very wise man that believed that if a man were permitted 
to make all the ballads, he need not care who should make the laws 
of a nation." — Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun {Letter to the Jfarquis 0/ 
Montrose, the Earl of Bathes, etc). 

" Forms ascend in order from the lowest to the highest. The lowest 
form is angular, or the terrestrial and corporeal. The second and 
next higher form is the circular, wliich is also called the perpetual 
angular, because the circumference of a circle is a perpetual angle. 
The form above this is the spiral, parent, and measure of circular 
forms; its diameters are not rectilinear, but variously circular, and 
have a spherical surface for center ; therefore it is called the perpetual 
circular. The form above this is the vortical, or perpetual-spiral ; next 
the perpetual vortical, or celestial ; last the perpetual-celestial or 
spiritual." — Swedenhorg''s Doctrine of Forms (as given in Emerson's 
Representative Men). 



. CHAPTER VIII. 

VORTICAL EDUCATION. 

Relapses into fetichism are recurrent both 
among peoples and among individuals. They are 
not confined to the sphere of religion, but char- 
acterize all decadent movements, whether in 
theology, politics, literature, or education. The 
churchman makes a fetich of his creed ; the 
statesman of some bill of rights or national con- 
stitution ; the man of letters enshrines an idol of 
rhetoric; the educator falls into a slavish wor- 
ship of traditional usage. Against all these fe- 
tiches the true iconoclast raises his protest and 
exclaims with Carlyle, " Quit your paper formu- 
las, equivalent to old wooden idols, undivine as 
they ! " 

The kindergarten has its own peculiar form 
of fetich-worship. It consists in attributing a 
magic power to Froebel's gifts and games, and in 
expecting blocks and balls, songs and gestures to 
do the work which can only be accomplished by 



214 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

human insight and devotion. It is time for this 
fetichism to be outgrown, and for each kinder- 
gartner to realize that the merit of Froebel's work 
lies in the ideals it embodies ; that his gifts and 
songs are merely instrumentalities for insinu- 
ating these ideals into, or rather evolving them 
from, the mind of the child, and that, like all 
other grades of education, the kindergarten de- 
pends for the realization of its aims upon the in- 
sight and efficiency of its agents. 

Of all living kindergartners, probably the one 
who uses the Mother-Play to the greatest advan- 
tage is Frau Henriette Schrader, of Berlin. The 
great-niece of Froebel, a member of his last class 
for young women at Blankenburg, and the re- 
cipient of many of his most valuable and sug- 
gestive letters, she is deeply imbued with his 
spirit, and is quite generally recognized as the 
head of the kindergarten movement in North 
Germany. The following account of a visit to 
the kindergarten connected with the Pestalozzi- 
Froebel House, Berlin, of which Frau Schrader 
is the animating spirit, illustrates her method of 
introducing the Froebel songs. The article from 
which I quote is contained in Barnard's Kinder- 
garten and Child Culture (p. 459), and is entitled 
A German Kindergarten. 

"This institution consisted of two divisions 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 215 

of the kindergarten proper, and of the transition 
class, altogether providing for children from 
three to six years of age. What struck me as 
especially worthy of notice was the unity of 
plan u]3on which the education during these 
three years was conducted. Each class repre- 
sented a year of age. At three a child enters 
the lowest division. Here the work of the 
kindergarten teacher was eminently that of a 
mother ; yet with all the freedom of the nursery 
there was a thread of reason running through 
the day's proceedings. These were not desultory, 
but sustained by some central thought, which 
was generally taken from a conversational lesson 
over the picture-book, or else from the present 
circumstance, such as of some live pet which had 
to be cared for and fed. 

" The first quarter of an hour was generally 
devoted to a chat ; but as the children were many, 
and the family type was upheld, the teacher took 
the children, in relays of six or seven at a time, 
to look at one or two plates in Froebel's Mother's 
Book ; the rest were meanwhile building or stick- 
laying, or playing in the garden, under the direc- 
tion of an assistant. 

"For example, a small number of children are 
seated round the knee of their motherly friend, 
who encourages them to talk freely on the ex- 



216 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

periences of the morning. Who brought Mary 
to the kindergarten this morning ? Who gave 
Annie that nice white pinafore ? The recollec- 
tion of the loved ones at home is stirred up, and 
every child contributes some little fact of its 
family history: each would like to tell that it 
has a dear mother, a father, a sister, or brother 
at home. This idea is seized and worked out by 
the motherly teacher. She inquires, relates, and 
finally promises to show them a picture of a 
family sitting together in the parlor. The pic- 
ture of a home interior is shown. The height- 
ened pleasure of the children may be read in 
their eager faces as they peer into the book and 
recognize the different members of the family in 
turn. After this the designs all round the cen- 
tral picture are looked at, and the children notice 
how there are father and mother hares in the 
long grass, accompanied by their little ones; 
how there is a pigeon family, a deer family, etc. 
The children return again to the central picture 
of the family group, and finally, the disposition 
having been created, the finger game is intro- 
duced. 'Let us look at our fingers; are they 
not like a little family too ? See how happily 
they live together; they always help one an- 
other. Shall we learn a little song about the 
family of fingers to-day ? ' ' Yes,' the children 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 217 

wish to do so ; and, imitating the action, they re- 
peat the following words : 

' This is our mother, dear and good, 
This is our father of merry mood, 
This our big brother so strong and tall, 
This our dear sister beloved of all ; 
This is the baby still tender and small, 
And this the whole family we call ; 
See, when together, how happy they be ! 
Loving and working, they ever agree.' " 

The ideal kindergarten course extends over 
three years, and throughout this whole period the 
Mother-Play, together with the concrete experi- 
ences which it interprets, should be the center 
of interest and activity. The right use of the 
book will make it the nucleus around which an 
otherwise confused mass of impressions is organ- 
ized into a living whole. Very evidently such 
a result can not be achieved by mechanically 
repeating plays and recurring to pictures. Each 
play is a germ which unfolds with the unfolding 
of the child, and the art of the kindergartner 
consists in nurturing this germ by ever-fresh 
illustrations of the ideal which is its life. 

We have witnessed the introduction of the 
family song. Let us now indicate the lines upon 
which it develops. The first point to be observed 
is that this play stands in organic relation to a 
number of others. Thus the play of the Bird's 



218 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

Nest is connected with the family, through its 
symbolic presentation of mother-love ; the Hiding 
Game, the Cuckoo, and the three Songs of the 
Knights also deal with the relationship between 
mother and child. Two finger plays picture the 
relationship of sisters and brothers; The Chil- 
dren on the Tower shows two families meeting 
for social intercourse ; the Carpenter and Joiner 
relate to the house which shelters the family. 
Each one of these games makes possible a re- 
turn with fresh and deeper interest to the play 
of the Family- Whole. 

But this is not all. The marginal pictures 
surrounding the representation of the human 
family open another path for the development 
of the ideal of family life. These pictures show 
a marsh family ; an air family ; several water 
families ; two field families ; a forest family ; 
and a hive family. The kindergartner should 
procure larger pictures illustrating these several 
types of life and make them the basis of a series 
of games, excursions, talks, and stories. She 
should show her little pupils ant-hills and bee- 
hives. She should collect different kinds of 
birds' nests, and in each kind lead the children 
to observe the precautions the mother bird has 
taken to insure the safety and comfort of her 
nestlings. When one reflects on the care which 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 219 

bees and ants take of their yonng, both in the 
larva and pupa states ; when one thinks of the 
mimicry through which the bird hides her nest 
from enemies, of her indefatigable zeal in gather- 
ing hairs, thistle-down, or feathers to line it ; of 
the localities in which she places it for the sake 
of safety and food ; of the patience with which 
she broods over her eggs — one realizes that there 
is practically no end to the observations and 
talks through which the heart of the child may 
be thrilled with presentiments of mother love. 
Analogous facts may be shown in vegetable life, 
and the wise kindergartner will not fail to call 
the attention of her children to the devices 
through which different plants protect their 
seed, to the ingenious means adopted to secure 
its dispersion, and to the food laid up by the 
mother plant for the nourishment of the em- 
bryo. 

The nest of the oriole is sewed firmly to twigs 
at the end of a high branch. Why ? The nest 
of the humming bird is covered with lichens and 
looks like a mere knot on a tree. Why ? When 
the weather is cold ants keep their larva in- 
doors ? Why ? The dandelion seed is attached 
to a fine little feather. Why? The effect of 
such experiences and questions is twofold. On 

the one hand, the child forms the habit of ascent 
16 



220 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

from perceptible facts to tlieir causal implica- 
tions ; and, on tlie other, through recognition of 
the varying manifestations of mother love and 
care in nature, he grows increasingly conscious 
of the love and care his own mother gives to 
him. " The use of natural history," says Emer- 
son, " is to give us aid in supernatural history." 
The consecration of nature through the revela- 
tion of spiritual ideals should be the aim of all 
excursions into the country, all nature plays 
and pictures, and all study of the ways of plants 
and animals. 

In addition to plays, excursions, talks, and 
pictures, the kindergartner may use carefully se- 
lected stories to illustrate the ideal she is seeking 
to develop. The story of the stork who would 
not leave her nest, though the chimney wherein 
it was built was in flames ; the beautiful tale of 
the mother who rescued her child from wicked 
elves by holding it tight in her arms through a 
series of hideous and terrifying metamorphoses, 
may be mentioned as good illustrations of mater- 
nal love. The child's duty of obedience is the 
theme of Little Red Riding Hood ; fraternal devo- 
tion is portrayed in the story of the Six Brothers 
who were transformed by malice into crows and 
restored to the human form by the bTavery and 
devotion of their sister. As the children mature 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 221 

they should hear and occasionally learn poems 
having a similar ethical content*; and they 
should see pictures of genuine artistic merit 
wherein family life, relationships, and duties are 
illustrated. Last of all, they may learn through 
story and picture of the one perfect mother and 
of the one ideal child " who was subject to his 
parents in all things," and who, growing in 
stature and wisdom, grew also in favor with 
God and with man.f 



* Misunderstandings are so likely to occur that it may not 
be superfluous to state that I am not recommending these 
stories and poems for children of only three or four years of 
age. In most kindergartens there are children six and even 
seven years old. For the younger children, the best stories I 
know are Ida Seele's. 

f It may be interesting in connection with Froebel's Family 
Song to take a peep into the family life at Keilhau, I there- 
fore translate part of a letter written by Froebel to his friend 
Barop, and describing the way in which the little community, 
poor in all the world can give, but rich in that love and con- 
fidence the world can never take away, celebrated the birthday 
of its head. 

" In the midst of our trouble " (so begins the letter) " I sup- 
posed the 21st of April would, of course, pass unnoticed, but you 
shall see how greatly I was mistaken. About noonday our young- 
est scholars, who had just had a lesson on flowers with Midden- 
dorff, brought me a beautiful wreath, in the center of which was 
a rosy apple. From my dear wife I received three budding twigs, 
one of beech, one of linden, one of oak, with a touching note 
explaining what her gift symbolized. Later, upon entering the 
sitting room, I found upon the table Langethal's present, an 
essay on The Hebrews, Greeks, and Romans, the Leading Na- 



222 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

The salient idea of each dramatic play may 
also be illustrated in the gift exercises. This 
procedure is of great importance, yet liable to 
abuse. It is a cardinal point with Froebel that 

tions of Antiquity, or the Typical Representatives of the Life 
of Humanity in the Boyhood of the Race. The essay was placed 
•within an exquisite wreath woven by Ernestine (Mrs. Langethal). 
" Touched to the heart by so much love and kindness, I sat, in 
the afternoon, wrapped in grateful and happy thought, when a 
noise in the hall announced the arrival of visitors. It was the 
wife and daughters of my dear brother, whom, in honor of my 
birthday, my good wife had invited to spend the evening with 
us. I tried to run up-stairs to put on a clean collar and cuffs, 
but Albertine (Mrs. Middendorff) stopped me on the way. Her 
angel daughter was in her arms, and the lovely little cherub 
held out to me a fragrant bouquet, around the stem of which 
was wrapped a strip of white paper, on which were written the 
following lines : 

" ' Can we go out to-day, mother my dear? ' 
' Nay, love, it rains ; bring thy playthings here ! 

Where wouldst thou, little darling, goV 
' Where all the loveliest blossoms blow,' 
' And what wouldst thou do with the blossoms sweet I' 
' I'd lay them all at his gracious feet.' 
' At whose, my little one kind and dear ? ' 
' His who was born this day of the year ! ' 
' Ah, little darling, stay thou here ! 

Our garden shall make thee lovely cheer : 

There color and fragrance breathe and blow, 

And heaven's pure air shall fill thee so.' 
' Mother, oh, see now my garland fine 1 

In sunshine I'll lay it before his shrine.' " 

Translation by Mrs. Laura Richards. 

" With what feelings I joined the circle of loving friends 
you can readily imagine. Our precious little baby was the pure 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 223 

the child reproduce his experiences in varied 
forms. Such reproduction, however, should be 
original, and the habit of preparing illustrations 
for the children to copy can not be too strongly 
condemned. Who would like to make something 
for baby ? Shall we build houses for our finger- 
families ? Shall we make furniture for the sit- 
ting room, the dining room, the nursery ? Such 
are examples of the questions, through which it 
is permissible to direct the energies of the chil- 
dren into definite channels. Add to these sug- 
gestions the participation of the kindergartner in 
each productive exercise — a minimum of help in 
ordering the separate achievements of the little 

and living bond which united our hearts more closely than ever 
during that golden afternoon. Toward twilight I proposed that 
we should all walk to the Kolm " (the plateau of a neighboring 
mountain, always a favorite resort with Froebeland his friends). 
"What was my astonishment to find this sanctum beautifully 
decorated and its seats covered with velvet moss ! I need not tell 
you that this charming surprise had been prepared by our dear 
Middendorff with the help of our pupils. Ferdinand and Wil- 
liam had also decorated the space around our favorite beech 
tree as well as the path leading to it. Whether we had music 
I know not, but it seems to me I yet hear the voice of singing, 
and that the echoes of that harmonioiis evening will never die 
out of my soul." 

" Thus," comments Wichard Lange, " did these innocent old 
boys riot in love and friendship, and revel in the simplest gifts 
of nature, while creditors threatened them, the world despised 
them, and actual want stared them in the face." — Aus FroeheVs 
Lehen, pp. 150-152. 



224 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

ones into a logical series, and a slight pressure in 
the direction of enabling each child to multiply 
his own ideas by the ideas of all the other chil- 
dren, and the extreme limit of interference in the 
process of free creation is reached.* 

The All-gone Song and the play of Grass-mow- 
ing initiate another series of games. The point 
of departure for this series is the cup of milk. 
The child looks into the cup, to find the milk all 
gone. Where has it gone ? What will it do ? 
How do we grow strong ? Such are the questions 
asked and answered in the little song whose 
theme is the final cause of food-taking. This 
play, pointing forward to ideal ends, is re-en- 
forced by the Grass-mowing, which rehearses 
the process through which milk is obtained and 
is interpreted by a picture showing mother and 
child ; a cup of milk ; the milkmaid and the 
cow ; the barn where hay is kept ; the farmer's 
wagon loaded with hay en route for the barn; 
a man mowing grass ; and a child helping him. 
The picture should be placed before the children, 
and its separate features discovered by them. 
When its details are mastered the kindergartner 
may weave them into a whole after the pattern 
of the story of The Old Woman and her Pig : 

* I do not mean to imply that there should never be a dic- 
tated exercise. They should, however, be infrequent. 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 225 

"Cow, COW, give milk, that baby may have 
his supper to-night." 

" Yes, but first you must give me hay." 

"Barn, barn, give hay, then cow will give 
milk, and baby shall have his supper to-night." 

"Yes. but first I must be filled." 

" Farmer, farmer, fill barn, then barn will give 
hay, then cow will give milk, and baby shall 
have his supper to-night." 

So runs the story through the series of acts 
leading back from the cup of milk to the sun- 
shine and the shower : Shine sun ; fall rain ; grow 
grass ; mow, Peter ; farmer fill the barn ; barn 
give hay ; eat, cow ; milk away, Mollie, and baby 
shall have his supper to-night. 

The story of The Bowl of Milk may also be 
told in rhyme. The following version, after the 
model of The House that Jack Built, was kindly 
written for me by Miss Emilie Poulsson : 

• THE RHYME OP THE BOWL OP MILK. 

Oh I here is the Milk, so sweet and white, 
All ready for dear little Baby. 

This is the Mother who, with delight, 
Poured into the bowl the milk so white. 
All ready for dear little Baby. 

This is the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill. 
To take to the Mother, who, with delight, 
Poured into the bowl the milk so white, 
All ready for dear little Baby. 



226 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

This is the Cow that gave milk each day 
To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill, 
To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
Poured into the bowl the milk so white, 
All ready for dear little Baby. 

This is the dry and sweet-smelling Hay, 
That was fed to the Cow that gave milk each day 
To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill, 
To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
Poured into tlie bowl the milk so white. 
All ready for dear little Baby. 

This is the Grass (in the field it grew, 
Helped by the sunshine and rain and dew) — 
The grass that was dried into sweet-smelling Hay 
And fed to the Cow that gave milk each day 
To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill. 
To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
Poured into the bowl the milk so white. 
All ready for dear little Baby. 

This is the Mower, who worked at the farm , 
Swinging his scythe with his strong, right arm, 
Mowing the fields of Grass (that grew. 
Helped by the sunshine and rain and dew) — 
The grass that was dried into sweet-smelling Hay 
And fed to the Cow that gave milk each day 
To Molly the Milkmaid, who worked with a will 
Her pail with the cow's good milk to fill. 
To take to the Mother who, with delight, 
Poured into the bowl the milk so white. 
All ready for dear little Baby. 

When the children have become familiar with 
the connected activities upon which depends the 



VORTICAL EDUCATION". 227 

cup of milk, their attention may again be direct- 
ed to the picture of Grass-mowing, and they may 
be led to notice in the foreground the two little 
girls who are sitting under opposite trees making 
dandelion chains. " What," asks the kindergart- 
ner, " are these children doing ? Shall we, too, 
make a chain ? " Such questions will lead up 
to a more conscious connection of the numerous 
links in the chain of causal energy, and this final 
rehearsal of the supper-producing process may 
end with thanks to sun, rain, grass, mower, 
farmer, milkmaid, cow, and, most of all, to the 
mother who sets in motion the long train of 
service. 

The reader will not require to be told that I 
have summed up the results of many repetitions 
of the game of Grass-mowing, nor yet that this 
play, like that of The Family, is organically re- 
lated to many others (Farmer, Miller, Baker, 
etc.), and should receive varied illustration from 
stories, poems, artistic pictures, and exercises 
with the kindergarten gifts. It may, however, 
be well to call attention to the fact that the rep- 
resentation in this and many other games de- 
velops with the unfolding of the idea. The little 
child should at first represent only the mow- 
ing; later he may add the milking, and still 
later he should make this game the center of a 



228 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

circular series, illustrating all its collateral ideas. 
Inexperienced kindergartners fall into many er- 
rors in playing Froebel's games. Often they 
ignore the gymnastic element ; often they make 
it so prominent as to take all life out of the play. 
Sometimes they introduce movements beyond the 
child's power of execution, or whose dramatic 
motive he fails to apprehend ; sometimes they 
persistently restrict the representation to a single 
activity, and thus make it formal and mechan- 
ical ; sometimes they allow the game to be played 
haphazard, losing thereby the help of the mimetic 
art in the unfolding of its idea, and the physical 
benefit of wisely ordered and varied exercise. 
These manifold errors can be avoided only by 
insight into the rational content of each particu- 
lar game and clear apprehension of the varied 
instrumentalities through which this content 
may be developed in the consciousness of the 
child.* 

In the examples thus far given I have indi- 
cated the manner of using the Mother-Play in 
the kindergarten. Even more important, how- 



* It is hoped that these simple illustrations of the use of 
Froebel's plays may help to correct that too common perver- 
sion and exaggeration of his symbolic method against which 
Mrs. Hailmann uttered a timely protest at the recent (July, 
1893) International Educational Congress in Chicago. 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 229 

ever, than its use in the kindergarten is its use 
in the nursery, and I shall therefore endeavor 
to illustrate through the single game of The 
Pigeon House Froebel's conception of the ideal 
intercourse of mother and child. 

Many mothers live for their children ; fewer 
live with their children ; fewer still permit their 
children to live with them. Yet nothing is more 
certain than that doing for children when disso- 
ciated from living with them breeds selfishness 
and fails to awaken love. Human hearts can be 
knit together only by common experiences and 
sympathies, and every mother would do well to 
adopt as her motto the words of Luther : " God, 
that he might draw man to him, became man ; 
we, if we would draw children to us, must be- 
come children." 

That mother and child should have a common 
life does not, however, imply that they should 
always be together, and no sensible person will 
accept the sentimental theory that the mother 
should be her child's sole and constant com- 
panion. 

One fatal objection to this theory is its impos- 
sibility. Mothers are not only mothers ; they are 
likewise wives, housewives, members of society, 
and individuals with minds of their own to be 
nourished and developed. But even if the ideal 



230 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

described were practically possible, its realiza- 
tion would be fatal in its influence upon the 
child, for it ignores one of the profoundest of 
psychologic truths, the truth which (borrowing 
the words from Rosenkranz as he from Hegel). 
I have called estrangement {Selhst-entfremdung 
= self -estrangement), and return ; the truth to 
which Froebel never tires of calling attention 
under the name of "Mediation of Opposites." 
This truth has varied aspects, and throws light 
upon many of the most mysterious phenomena 
of nature and of human life. Adequately to 
explain Froebel, a whole volume should be de- 
voted to its elucidation and illustration. For the 
present, however, I must -restrict myself to the 
statement that it furnishes the clew to a large 
number of the songs in the Mother-Play, and 
the key to Froebel's conception of education as 
a practical art. In the Falling-falling game, 
Froebel gives his first hint of the truth that 
spiritual union is realized through separation. 
During the first weeks of life the infant has no 
consciousness of its own distinct being. It is, in 
a physical sense, one with its mother, and shows 
in many ways that it is affected by her chang- 
ing states of mind and body. Gradually, how- 
ever, the baby learns to sit, creep, stand, walk, 
notice, play, and assert its own will. How shall 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 231 

the motlier respond to these varying manifesta- 
tions of a life distinct from her own ? Has not 
instinct taught her that in the crescive feeling 
of independent existence she must find the means 
of binding her child in deeper bonds of love and 
sympathy ? The little game. See how Baby Falls, 
is played in every nursery. The child, lying on 
a soft pillow, is gently raised by the mother into 
a sitting position, and then allowed to fall back. 
At first he is frightened, but gradually he begins 
to enjoy the play ; and when he has learned to 
fall without any feeling of alarm, we may be 
sure that the germs of faith have budded in his 
soul. Later, he will jump from a high mantel 
into his mother's arms, and seem never to tire of 
the fun. With increasing consciousness of his 
distinct selfhood comes the desire to hide him- 
self, and he delights in games like the third play 
of the Knights, wherein strangers are repre- 
sented as wishing to carry off the child, whom 
the mother stoutly refuses to give up, and even 
conceals from those who would seize her treas- 
ure. No person who remembers his childhood 
will need to be told that many of our most popu- 
lar traditional games are freighted with a simi- 
lar motive. 

Froebel asks of mothers only to universalize 
the lesson taught by instinct. If the infant needs 



232 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

to fall from the mother's arms in order to trust 
the mother's love, does not the older child need 
to be sometimes separated from her that he may 
know the joy of return to her ? Does not the boy 
need other companions, if only for the sake of 
learning that none of them can replace the one 
dearest companion ? Does not the youth need 
absence from home, and the experiences of board- 
ing-school and college in order to realize the 
sweetness of home ? Does not each man need 
foreign travel to bring him spiritually near to 
his own country ? Does not the student need to 
sink himself in the past that he may rise into 
adequate consciousness of the present ? Did not 
the prodigal son need the journey into a far coun- 
try, the riotous living, and the husks fit only for 
swine, to stir his dull soul with the sense of his 
father's love ? Does not the whole striving, as- 
piring, sinning, suffering, repenting human race 
need the discipline of evil to fit it for the Father's 
house above ? Such are a few of the truths which 
lie coiled up in the principle of estrangement and 
return. Froebel deals with those applications of 
the principle which fall within the scope of early 
education. I have indicated the steps through 
which he seeks to deepen the inner unity of 
mother and child. It is only necessary to allude 
to The Fishes, The Child and Moon, The Boy and 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 233 

Moon, and The Light-Bird on the Wall, to waken 
in the mind of the kindergartner consciousness 
of the fact that in these plays he endeavors to 
aid the soul in its ascent from a physical to a 
spiritual union with nature. As primitive men 
dreamed of heroes who mounted to the "sky 
country'' and built towers which aspired to 
reach unto heaven, so the baby tries to grasp the 
moon, and the boy thinks he may climb to it by 
a ladder. As the hope that built Babel was ful- 
filled at Pentecost, so the impulse which moves 
the child to grasp for the sun and moon is satis- 
fied when he learns the truths that "impara- 
dise the mind," and from the physical heaven 
that lies about infancy, passes into the true 
heaven which is "not in space nor turns on 
poles." 

In every attempt to apply practically the in- 
sight into estrangement and return, the impor- 
tant thing to remember is that alienation is 
always means to an end. The child who hides 
too long in play may do something which will 
create the desire to hide in earnest. The boy, 
whose adventures at school, in the field, on the 
playground, are not poured into his mother's ear 
and interpreted by her sympathy, will be led 
away from her instead of being drawn nearer 
to her by these alien experiences. The student 



234 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

may lose himself so completely in the past that 
he can never find himself in the present ; the 
traveler may wander too long in foreign lands 
and thus kill his love of country ; the sinner 
may get frozen with Lucifer in the circle of ice 
instead of returning with the prodigal to the 
light and warmth of the Father's house. Sepa- 
ration for union, estrangement for return, is the 
watchword of education, and the impetus through 
which individual life widens from a mere point 
to infinitude. 

The play of The Pigeon House is interesting 
as one of the series of games wherein Froehel 
points out to the mother how, by entering into 
the child's life, she may knit him to her in love 
and sympathy. The child shall see his home in 
the Dove-Cote, and himself in the forth-flying 
and home-returning doves. The first step in the 
process is dramatic representation, and so the 
left arm is raised to show the pillar on which the 
pigeon house stands ; the right hand makes the 
house, and the fingers the flying birds. Accom- 
panying the representation the mother sings : 

" I open wide my dove-cote door, 
The pigeons fly out and away they soar ; 
They fly to green field and spreading tree, 
Where little birds are glad to be ; 
And when they come back to rest at night 
Again I close my pigeon house tight." 



VORTICAL EDUCATION". ,235. 

The picture illustrating this play shows a 
pigeon house and a sparrow house ; birds flying 
from and returning to each ; a mother bird 
perched on a tree beside her nest ; a mother 
with her baby and a somewhat older child going 
to the fields ; two children returning from the 
fields ; in the background the home, in the fore- 
ground a snail creeping out of his shell, and 
a snake crawling into its hole. Thus outgoing 
and incoming life is the burden of the whole 
picture. 

"Behold," says Froebel, "the child that can 
scarcely keep himself erect, and that can walk 
only with the greatest care ; he sees a twig or a 
bit of straw ; painfully he secures it, and, like the 
young bird in spring, carries it, as it were, to his 
nest. . . . The force of the rain has washed out of 
the sand small, smooth, bright pebbles ; quickly 
the little one gathers them and tries to build with 
them. Is he not in a deeper sense collecting ma- 
terial for his future life-building ? " Moreover, 
is not the child here, too, father of the man ; and 
the contrast of outgoing and incoming life shown 
in the picture of the Pigeon House a type of all 
human experience ? Projecting ourselves in 
deeds ; beholding ourselves mirrored therein ; 
groping our painful way through the maze of 
particular facts; rising therefrom to the vision 
17 



236 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

of the wliole; breaking ourselves up into dis- 
jointed fragments of feeling, thought, and will ; 
collecting ourselves together out of these frag- 
ments into the unity of self-consciousness — such 
are the alternations of energy through which the 
soul attains at last divine illumination, and is 
consecrated to divine service. 

One more feature of the Pigeon-House picture 
deserves mention, because it is common to most 
of the illustrations in the Mother-Play. Behind 
the mother, who with her little ones is going 
to the field, sits another mother who is teach- 
ing her baby the Pigeon-House game. Thus 
the child not only reflects his experience in his 
play, but beholds this reflection mirrored in the 
picture. That this naive process of mirroring 
life is in accord with the method of all true 
poets no student of literature will need to be 
reminded. 

Returning to the mother at play with her 
child, we observe that the refrain of the song 
imitates the cooing of doves. What, asks the 
mother, are the little doves talking about ? Are 
they not telling each other what they have seen 
in the meadows and gardens ? Now you shall 
be my little dove, and tell me all you have seen 
and done while you have been away from me. 

Children love to recount their experiences, for 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 287 

in telling what they have seen and done they take 
possession of it.* How the mother may aid this 
effort to master experience Froebel indicates 
in the following conversation : The child has 

* At the age of twenty mouths a child is not keen to hear 
stories and fables, which he would not understand ; but he 
delights in recounting his own experiences. A little girl of 
this age, whenever her mother took her out with her, used to 
relate to her father in the evening all that she and her mother 
had seen and done. " We went out under the large trees of the 
Luxembourg ; the dog was with us ; he kept running around 
the perambulator of a little girl, and every now and then he 
came up and licked her hands and face. But the dog was very 
naughty : he ate the little girl's cake. Mamma scolded the dog 
well, and drove him away with her blue umbrella, which made 
Mary laugh just when she was beginning to cry. Then a little 
boy named Joseph came and sat on a bench by Mary. He was 
bigger than little Mary, but he was very polite, and he is very 
fond of the little girl. He let her take his balloon, and he did 
not hurt her doll ; then he and Mary jumped about together, 
but the little boy fell down and made a bump on his forehead. 
He cried very much, and the little girl cried too, because he was 
hurt ; and then we walked a long, long way to the farthest 
bench with Madame X., who loves baby very much. Madame 
X. said to baby : ' When are you coming to see me ? There 
are some beautiful apricots in the garden, and the birds in the 
aviary are always very pretty and very happy ; they often ask 
where little Mary is, saying, 'Coui, coui, coui,' etc." And dur- 
ing this recital, often interrupted by the kisses and pettings 
of her mother, or by bursts of laughter and short remarks from 
her father, the little girl, all eyes and ears, enacted all the va- 
rious emotions which the events called forth, gesticulating with 
arms, feet, and head, and mimicking the cries of the animals 
she was talking about. She would become half lost in the nar- 
rative, or rather in dramatizing it ; and the habit of recounting 
these true stories prepared her for following the fictitious ones 



238 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

spent the afternoon out of doors. He is full of 
emotions born of what he has seen, but he can 
not bind and hold his fleeting memories. The 
mother comes to his help. By a few well-di- 
rected questions she finds out that he has seen 
many kinds of birds, likewise bees, beetles, and 
butterflies. Then she asks : 

" Where did you see the pigeons and chick- 
ens ? " 

" In the yard, mother ; they were picking up 
the grains of corn and eating them. The little 
chickens ran so fast when they found anything, 
or when the cock called them because he had 
found something for them. But the pigeons 
could not run so fast, nor the ravens which I 
saw in the field. One raven ran almost as a 
pigeon runs, and one black pigeon ran so that 
I thought it was a raven. But the ravens and 
magpies could hop, and you will never believe 
how the water- wagtails and sparrows can too ; 
it is such fun to see them hop about on their 
little stiff legs ; and the geese and ducks too, 

■which her mother invented for her, suiting them gradually to 
the progressive development of her intelligence. When two 
years old she could not exist without these exciting little tales, 
and she used to say several times a day to her mother: " Mamma, 
tale about dood ittle dal ; mamma, tale about ittle dal." — First 
Three Years of Childhood, Bernard Ferez, translated by Alice 
M. Christie, pp. 96, 97. 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 239 

how they swim in the water and dive ! But only 
think ! they could fly too. They flew straight 
over my head, away to the pond. I was so 
frightened ! " 

" My child, why should the geese and ducks 
not fly ? They are birds, just as doves and hens, 
swallows and sparrows, larks and finches are 
birds." 

" Mother, are the pigeons and hens really 
birds ? " 

" Have they not feathers ? Have they not 
wings ? Have they not two legs, as all birds 
have ? " 

" But the pigeons live in their holes and in 
the pigeon house, and chickens don't fly." 

" Chickens have forgotten how to fly, because 
they use their power of flying so little. If we do 
not want to forget how to do a thing we must 
practice it. As for the pigeons who live in 
houses, they are like the sparrows and swallows, 
who are certainly birds, though they live in 
houses and under roofs." 

" Mother, are the bees and beetles and butter- 
flies birds too. They have wings, and can fly 
much higher than the ducks and hens can." 

" They have no feathers ; they build no little 
nests, and there are many things which they have 
not and which birds have. They are animals, it 



24:0 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

is true, just as birds are, for they can move as 
they like. They have something, too, which 
birds do not have. Look at this beetle, look at 
this fly. Each has a notch here, and another 
there. These notches are called sections, and the 
creatures themselves are called insects." * 

Helping us to knowledge is binding us in 
sympathy. Out of the depths of his satisfied 
heart comes the child's eager cry, " O mother, 
when I next go out you must go with me ! " 

I have likened the unfolding of the nursery 
songs to the life of a tree. In this conversation 
we see the branch of natural history shooting out 
from the great limb of sympathy with nature. 
In relating the isolated elements of her child's 
experience the mother necessarily becomes sci- 
entific. 

The category of our age is evolution, and the 
one question we ask of each object is how it 
came to be. Of our own coming to be, however, 
we know little or nothing. To most of us the 
first few years of life are a blank in memory. 
We wake to consciousness with definite feel- 



* Mother's Songs, Games, and Stories, translation by Frances 
and Emily Lord, pp, 155, 156. (I have made a few unimportant 
changes. The thought of this sentence is more simply and 
naively expressed in the original. Kerb = notch ; Kerbthiere 
= notched animals.) 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 241 

iugs, thoughts, and tendencies. Whence sprang 
the feelings ? How grew the thoughts ? What 
fixed the tendencies ? We ask in vain. Over 
the sources of life roll the silent waves of un- 
consciousness, and memory loses itself in a be- 
ginning when "all was without form and void, 
and darkness was upon the face of the deep." 

How much it would add to the power and 
beauty of our lives if this lost connection could 
be at least partially restored ! Should we not 
better understand what we are if we knew how 
we came to be ? Might not a wise and tender 
mother, by watching her child, behold the dawn- 
ing of his conscious life ? Might she not, by sa- 
credly guarding in her heart his small experi- 
ences, reconstruct for him the past he can not 
remember ? Should not the first history a child 
learns be his own ? 

The play and talk we have been considering 
hint to us how this end may be attained. The 
organization of the child's experience not only 
interprets it but helps him to remember it. 
Other games take further steps in this same 
direction. Thus in The Children on the Tower 
Froebel unites all the plays previously learned, 
the particular gesture associated with each game 
being repeated when that game is referred to. 
In The Little Artist ho indicates how familiar 



242 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

objects may be roughly drawn, explaining in the 
commentary that "the child now has a small 
world within him, and should represent this 
world in a way suited to his strength." Through 
such representation all that life has taught him 
is made to " pass in review before his soul." 
Finally, the Mother-Play as a whole preserves for 
the child the history of his life. The infant edu- 
cated in obedience to its wise suggestions, and 
grown to a child six years old, sees himself and 
his past in its pictures, and understands himself 
through his mother's explanation of them. In 
one picture he is making a basket for papa ; in 
another he is calling the chickens ; in still an- 
other he is trying to grasp the moon. Into the 
general history of childhood each mother may 
weave the history of her own child, and, guided 
by Froebel, teach him how to pause in life that 
he may collect the results of living. 

The principle of concentric instruction has of 
late years excited a great and growing interest. 
This form of education selects some theme which 
appeals to the imagination of the pupil, and re- 
lates all the different school exercises to this cen- 
tral topic. Thus in a European school of the 
third grade, described by Dr. Klemm, everything 
done was in organic connection with the story of 
Robinson Qrusoe. The children made pots of 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 243 

clay like Robinson, wove baskets like Robinson, 
and, in imitation of this hero, fashioned rude fur- 
niture, ladders, fish-hooks, anchors, and sails; 
geography was learned by molding maps in the 
sand and tracing Crusoe's journeys ; the compo- 
sitions written on slates had his exploits for their 
subjects, and even arithmetical problems were in 
some way connected with his experiences.* 

That the practice of the kindergarten is in 
accord with the principle of concentric education 
will, it is hoped, be evident from the illustrations 
given. A brief summary of the process of devel- 
opment indicated may, however, help to define its 
idea. 

I. The point of departure is generally some 
actual experience of the children. 

II. This experience, together with its causal 
presuppositions, is reproduced in pantomime. 

III. The pantomime is interpreted by word 
and music. 

IV. The dramatized experience is shown in a 
picture. 

V. In the picture the child not only beholds 
the fact or process dramatized, but also contem- 
plates himself in the act of dramatizing it. In 
other words, the picture is a mirror wherein he 
sees himself playing. 

* European Schools, pp. 185-192. 



244 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

VI. Conversations on the subjects illustrated 
in the play bring its entire circle of activities 
under the focus of consciousness. 

VII. Stories and poems having a related con- 
tent are used to deepen and spiritualize the cen- 
tral idea embodied in each play. 

VIII. Pictures presenting the subject of the 
play in a truly artistic form are hung upon the 
walls of the kindergarten, and create a spiritual 
environment from which the child draws spirit- 
ual food. 

IX. The child is encouraged to reproduce, with 
the kindergarten gifts and occupations, the facts 
and i)rocesses illustrated in his games. Actively 
recreating his experiences, he both interprets 
them to himself and stamps upon them his own 
individuality. 

X. Related games are thrown into a series 
and played in sequence. 

XI. Each circle of experiences, pantomimes, 
songs, pictures, stories, and poems, is organized 
into a living and developing unity by recurrences 
to the original experience and play from which 
such circle has been evolved.* 

* It may seem that I am describing rather what ought to be 
than what is. The following additional extract from the article 
already quoted will show that in Fran Schrader's Kindergarten, 
the ideal is at least approximately realized : 

" Let us trace how this method of introducing the children 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 245 

If I may venture to criticise the ordinary pro- 
cess of concentric instruction, I should say that 
its chief defect is lack of clear insight in the 
choice of its themes. These themes furnish what 

to life around them was continued with those from four to six 
years of age. These were occupied once or twice a week in 
gardening a plot of ground belonging to them. Here many 
of the plants which were to furnish subject-matter for their ob- 
servation were sown, and carefully tended throughout the spring 
and summer. They also became practically acquainted with a 
few industrial processes, such as they could take part in. For 
instance, when 'wheat' was being especially considered, the 
children enjoyed the fun of actually reaping the wheat they had 
helped to sow in the spring in the plot of ground common to all. 
They bound it in sheaves and carried it in triumph into their 
schoolroom, where each child received a stalk or two with the 
full ear ; and, while sitting quietly round the table, they held 
the stalks upright and close together, until the children could 
very nearly picture to themselves a cornfield which had taken 
root indoors. The kindergartnerin then led them by a series of 
self-made experiences to an appreciation of such facts as — 

1. " The height of the stalk. (This was very simply and well 
brought out by a story being told of how the kindergiirtnerin 
had played at hide-and-seek with a little boy in a cornfield dur- 
ing the summer liolidays.) 

2. " The hollowness of the stalk. The children learned this 
by blowing soap-bubbles through the straw. 

3. " The presence of knots in the stalk. (This experience was 
likewise gained while blowing soap-bubbles ; some children hav- 
ing been allowed to break the straws in the spaces between the 
knots, they found they could not use them.) 

4. " The ear of corn hangs its head. Why ? (This led to an 
examination of an empty and a full ear.) 

5. " The ear is a great house in which there are many rooms. 

6. " In each room there lives a single little grain. 

7. " Of what use is the grain ? (They had sown it in 



246 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

is called the Gesinnungsstoff — i. e., matter ap- 
pealing to sentiment and imagination.* One 
effect of the concentric exercises is, or should be, 
to deepen the influence of this Oesinnungsstoff 



the spring ; they were now about to learn its use experi- 
mentally.) 

"Another day the corn was thrashed in the garden, the chil- 
dren using a small flail in turn. The grain was gathered and 
separated from the chaff by some others. Part of the grain was 
reserved for seed, and a small quantity was ground by the chil- 
dren between stones. 

"Another day flour was taken and pancakes were baked. 
The children, under the direction of an older person, had each 
something to do in the process, the older ones learning to beat 
the eggs and to stir the flour, while the younger ones ran on 
little errands. At last, the great moment having arrived, the 
company sat down to enjoy the feast. Meanwhile the leading 
idea was carried through the various occupations somewhat in 
the following manner : 

"The elder children were 'pricking' on paper the ear of 
corn or the mill which ground the corn ; the younger children 
only outlined the millstones. Again, a scythe was sewn in col- 
ored silk or wool. When stick and ring laying was the order of 
the day, then the cart which carried the sacks of corn was rep- 
resented, etc. The appropriate games were The Farmer, The 
Miller, The Mill, etc. 

" Finally a story, or simple piece of poetry, summing up the 
children's experiences, was spoken or sung to Ihe kindcrgiirtner- 
in's accompaniment on the piano. A picture, representing the 
subject from an artistic point of view (The Sower, by L. Riohter), 
was shown and enjoyed as a resume of the children's experiences 
during the past week or two. There was nothing in either the 
story or the poem which was foreign to their experience." — 
Barnard's Kindergarten and Child Culture, pp. 460, 4G1. 

* European Schools, L. R. Kleram, Ph. I)., p. 185. 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 247 

upon the mind. It would seem, therefore, that 
the selection of suitable themes is a matter of 
prime import, and that serious injury may be 
done the mind by developing concentric exercises 
around facts which belong not to the center but 
the circumference of thought. 

Froebel solves this problem by using as Ge- 
sinnungsstoff the symbolic aspects of nature and 
the ethical ideals embodied in human institu- 
tions. His plan of education is, therefore, not 
merely concentric but spiral, and not merely 
spiral but vortical. Its physical symbol is the 
inverted cone, the point upon which the whole 
scheme revolves being to fill the emotions with a 
rational content, while the widening and ascend- 
ing circles represent the progressive development 
within the conscious intellect of the ideals which 
originally floated unconscious in the depths of 
feeling. 

Pestalozzi claims that the center from which 
education radiates is sense-perception {Anscliau- 
ung). Froebel claims that this center is Oemiith, 
a word explained by Hegel to mean the " unde- 
veloped, indefinite totality of spiritual being." 
We may approximately translate GemiHh by 
heart, and affirm that with Froebel the pivot 
upon which true education turns is the regener- 
ation of the affections. Long before, Froebel, 



248 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION". 

that great pliilosoplier whose books " make such 
havoc of all our originalities/' had given expres- 
sion to the same thought, and no better state- 
ment of the aim of the Mother-Play can ever be 
made than is contained in the following passage 
from the second book of Plato's Laws : 

"As to wisdom and true and fixed opinions, 
liappy is the man who acquires them, even when 
declining in years ; and he who possesses them, 
and the blessings which are contained in them, 
is a perfect man. Now, I mean by education that 
training which is given by suitable habits to the 
first instincts of virtue in children ; when pleas- 
ure, and friendship, and pain, and hatred, are 
rightly implanted in souls not yet capable of 
understanding the nature of them, and who find 
them, after they have attained reason, to be in 
harmony with her. This harmony of the soul, 
when perfected, is virtue ; but the particular 
training in respect of pleasure and pain, which 
leads you always to hate what you ought to hate 
and love what you ought to love, from the begin- 
ning to the end, may be separated off ; and, in my 
view, will be rightly called education." * 

With insight into Froebel's aim comes appre- 
ciation of his symbolic method ; for, while we rec- 

* Laws, Book II, Jowett's translation, p. 222. 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 249 

ognize that the seeds of truth will germinate only 
in soil which has been " made fertile with right 
emotion," we must also admit that there is no 
" feeling worthy the name but is as dew around 
an idea." If, therefore, we wish to make children 
feel, we must give them something to feel about, 
and in order to educate the heart we must illu- 
minate the imagination. In the childhood of the 
race the premonitions of reason were uttered in 
symbol and myth. The history of the individual 
repeats that of the race, and through typical facts 
and poetic analogies we may waken in the heart 
of childhood those truths which are the "foun- 
tain light of all our day " — " the master light of 
all our seeing " : 

" Truths that wake 

To perish never ; 
Which neither listlessness nor mad endeavor, 

Nor man, nor boy, 
Nor all that is at enmity with joy, 
Can utterly abolish or destroy," 

Reverting for the last time to Froebel's defi- 
nition of man as Gliedganses, we ought now to 
perceive clearly that it implies two apparently 
antagonistic yet really complementary ideas. 
The individual can develop only through his 
own self-activity. The individual can develop 
only by appropriating the experience of man- 
kind. The solution of the paradox is found in a 



250 SYMBOLIC EDUCATION. 

t'development incited by generic ideals. SucL. a 
development testifies to tlie freedom of man as 
well as to the solidarity of mankind ; for ideals 
are not external to the mind, but products of its 
own activity, and through obeying them man be- 
comes his own creator. 

True freedom is not a dower, but an achieve- 
ment ; and insight into the ideal nature of man 
justifies both the long agony of history and the 
ignorance, impotence, and bondage wherein the 
career of each individual begins. "Man is the 
worm born to bring forth the angelic butterfly/* 
and in the very fact that by nature he is prone 
upon the earth may be read the prophecy that he 
shall one day expand his wings freely in the free 
air. His destiny could never be realized unless 
contradicted at every point by his original state. 
He is born a slave that he may conquer freedom 
by breaking the chains of ignorance and throw- 
ing off the shackles of sin.* 

* In his first aspect, as child of Nature, man must be con- 
ceived as fettered and chained, ruled by impulse and dominated 
by sense ; not yet awakened to consciousness, he is a being of 
sense and of physical life. In his final aspect as a child of God 
man must be conceived as free : he is not only capable of self- 
consciousness and destined to realize this capability, but he al- 
ready possesses a prophetic knowledge of his nature and des- 
tiny ; hence he is a being who reasons and reflects, and of his 
own free will seeks the highest unity of life. In his inter- 
mediate condition as child of man he is to be conceived as a 



VORTICAL EDUCATION. 251 

Science lias become poetic since she has 
learned to recognize in the process of evolution 
the travail of a world pregnant with the ideal 
of freedom. The problem of all religions is how 
to escape from that slavery which the prescient 
soul knows to be contrary to its true nature. 
The clew to history is "the progress of souls 
into the consciousness of freedom." The ascend- 
ing rounds of individual development are marked 
by clearer insight into what freedom implies, and 
by more concrete realization of freedom in the 
acts of the will. The conscious aim of education 
should be to aid the self -emancipation of the pu- 
pil by inflaming his soul with the ideals symbol- 
ized in nature, revealed in history, incarnated in i 
institutions, and always and everywhere inciting 
the struggle through which the worm mounts to 
man and the man to God. 



being who, in chains and shackles, yet struggles for freedom ; 
who in isolation strives for union, and who in thought is ever 
seeking relief from the oppression of particulars in the unity of 
consciousness. Hence the child of man strives, aspires, and 
loves, and under the pain of conflict beats the joy of his hope." 
— Pddagogik des Kindergartens, p. 9 {free translation). 



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history. By a book for the young is meant one in which the author studies to 
make his statements clear and explicit, in which curious and picturesque de- 
tails are inserted, and in which the writer does not neglect such anecdotes as 
lend the charm of a human and personal interest to the broader facts of the 
nation's story. That history is often tiresome to the young is not so much 
the fault of history as of a false method of writing by which one contrives 
to relate events without sympathy or imagination, without narrative connec- 
tion or animation. The attempt to master vague and general records of 
kiln-dried facts is certain to beget in the ordinary reader a repulsion from 
the study of history— one of the very most important of all studies for its 
widening influence on general culture. 





"Fills a decided gap which has existed for 
the past twenty years in American historical 
literature. The work is .idmirably planned 
and executed, and will at once take its place as 
a standard record of the life, growth, and de- 
velopment of the nation. It is profusely and 
beautifully illustrated." — Boston Transcript. 

" The book in its new dress makes a much 
finer appearance than 
before, and will be wel- 
comed by older readers ' • -^ > 
as gladly as its predeces- Indian's TRAP, 
sor was greeted by girls 

and boys. The lavish use the publishers have made of colored 
plates, woodcuts, and photographic reproductions, gives an un- 
wonted piquancy to the printed page, catching the eye as surely 
as the text engages the mind." — New York Critic. 

"The author writes history as a story. It can 'never be 
less than that. The book will enlist the interest of young 
people, enlighten their understanding, and by the glow of its 
statements fix the great events of the country firmly in tho 
OENERAL PUTNAM. mind." — Sati Francisco Bulletin. 



New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

yj BR AH AM LINCOLN: The True Story of a Great 
-tJt LIFE. By William H. Herndon and Jesse W. Weik. 
With numerous Illustrations. New and revised edition, with 
an introduction by Horace White. In two volumes. i2mo. 
Cloth, $3.00. 
This is probably the most intimate life of Lincoln ever written. The 
book, by Lincoln's law-partner, William H. Herndon, and his friend Jesse 
W. Weik, shows us Lincoln the man. It is a true picture of his surround- 
ings and influences and acts. It is not an attempt to construct a political 
history, with Lincoln often in the background, nor is it an effort to apotheo- 
size the American who stands first in our history next to Washington. The 
writers knew Lincoln intimately. Their book is the result of unreserved 
association. There is no attempt to portray the man as other than he really 
was, and on this account their frank testimony must be accepted, and their 
biography must take permanent rank as the best and most illuminating study 
of Lincoln's character and personality. Their story, simply told, relieved 
by characteristic anecdotes, and vivid with local color, will be found a fasci- 
nating work. 

"Truly, they who wish to know Lincoln as he really was must read the biography 
of him written by his friend and law-partner, W. H. Herndon. This book was im- 
peratively needed to brush aside the rank growth of myth and legend which was 
threatening to hide the real lineaments of Lincoln from the eyes of posterity. On one 
pretext or another, but usually upon the plea that he was the central figure of a great 
historical picture, most of his self-appointed biographers have, by suppressing a part 
of the truth and magnifying or embellishing the rest, produced portraits which those of 
Lincoln's contemporaries who knew him best are scarcely able to recognize. There is, 
on the other hand, no doubt about the faithfulness of Mr. Herndon's delineation. The 
marks of unflinching veracity are patent in every line." — New York Sun. 

"Among the books which ought most emphatically to have been written must be 
classed ' Herndon's Lincoln.' " — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" The author has his own notion of what a biography should be, and it is simple 
enough. The story should tell all, plainly and even bluntly. Mr. Herndon is naturally 
a very direct writer, and he has been industrious in gathering material. Whether an 
incident happened before or behind the scenes, is all the same to him. He gives it 
without artifice or apology. He describes the life of his friend Lincoln just as he saw 
it." — Cincinftati Cotnmercial Gazette. 

" A remarkable piece of literary achievement — remarkable alike for its fidelity to 
facts, its fullness of details, its constructive skill, and its literary charm." — New I'ark 
Times. 

" It will always remain the authentic life of Abraham Lincoln." — Chicago Herald. 

"The book is a valuable depository of anecdotes, innumerable and characteristic 
It has every claim to the proud boast of being the ' true story of a great life.' " — Phila- 
delphia Ledger. 

"Will be accepted as the best biography yet written of the great President." — 
Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" Mr. White claims that, as a portraiture of the man Lincoln, Mr. Herndon's work 
'will never be surpassed.' Certainly it has never been equaled yet, and this new edi- 
tion is all that could be desired." — New i'ork Observer. 

" The three portraits of Lincoln are the best that exist ; and not the least charac- 
teristic of these, the Lincoln of the Douglas debates, has never before been engraved. 
. . . Herndon's narrative gives, as nothing else is likely to give, the material from 
which we may form a true picture of the man from infancy to maturity." — The Nation. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., 1, 3. & 5 Bond Street. 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



nrHE COUNTRY SCHOOL IN NEW ENG- 
J- LAND. By Clifton Johnson. With 60 Illustrations from 
Photographs and Drawings made by the Author. Square 8vo. 
Cloth, gilt edges, $2.50. 

" An admirable undertaking carried out in an admirable way. . . . Mr. Johnson's 
descriptions are vivid and lifelike and are full of humor, and the illustrations, mostly 
after photographs, give a solid effect of realism to the whole work, and are superbly re- 
produced. . . . The definitions at the close of this volume are very, verj' funny, and yet 
they are not stupid; .hey are usually the result of deficient logic." — Boston Beacon. 

" A charmingly written account of the rural schools in this section of the country. 
It speaks of the old-fashioned school days of the early quarter of this century, of the 
mid century schools, of the country school of to-day, and of how scholars think and 
write. The style is animated and picturesque. ... It is handsomely printed, and is 
interesting from its pretty cover to its very last page." — Boston Saturday Evening 
Gazette. 

"A unique piece of book-making that deserves to be popular. . . . Prettily and 
serviceably bound, and well illustrated." — The Churchman, 

" The readers who turn the leaves of this handsome book will unite in saying the 
author has 'been there.' It is no fancy sketch, but text and illustrations are both a 
reality." — Chicago Inter-Ocean. 

" No one who is familiar with the little red schoolhouse can look at these pictures 
and read these chapters without having the mind recall the boyhood experiences, and 
the memory is pretty sure to be a pleasant one." — Chicago Times. 

" A superlily prepared volume, which by its reading matter and its beautiful illustra- 
tions, so natural and finished, pleasantly and profitably recall memories and associa- 
tions connected with the very foundations of our national greatness." — A'ew York 
Observer. 

" It is a point not yet decided whether the text or illustrations of this ' Country 
School ' give the most pleasure. Both are original, and removed from the beaten track 
of conventionality." — Philadelphia Ledger. 

" One of the finest and most fitting of all the Christmas books likely to appear." — 
Hartford Times. 

'J^HE BRONTES IN IRELAND. By Dr. William 

J- Wright. With Portraits and numerous Illustrations. i2mo. 

Cloth, $1.50. 

"A striking; contribution to biographical literature and a significant confirmation of 
the doctrine of hereditary genius has been made by Dr. William Wright in his wonder- 
fully entertaining narrative. . . . The book is admirably written, and is in itself as 
interesting as a romance. It has a number of valuable illustrations, plans, etc., and 
will be of the .most intense fascination to all who have read and thrilled over 'Jane 
Eyre ' and ' Shirley,' or puzzled over the mystery of the wild and erratic Branwell." — • 
Boston Beacon. 

"Dr. Wright has fathfuUy traced the current of Bronte life and thought back to 
the hidden sources. The biography has some surprises in store for the reader. It is 
fully illustrated, and presents a varied and romantic tale without a touch of the com- 
monplace. " — Philadelphia Ledger. 

" One of the most curious pages which have lately been added to literary history." 
— Boston Traveller. 

" A new and thrilling chapter in the history of the Bronte sisters." — Boston Ad, 
litrtiscr. 

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



T 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

WORKS BY ARABELLA B. BUCKLEY (MRS. FISHER). 

'T^HE FAIRY-LAND OF SCIENCE. With 74 II- 
J- lustrations. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 

" Deserves to take a permanent place in the literature of youth." — London Times. 

"So interesting that, having once opened the book, we do not know how to leave 
off reading." — Saturday Review. 

'HROUGH MAGIC GLASSES and other Lectures. 
A Sequel to " The Fairy-Land of Science." Cloth, $1.50. 
CONTENTS. 
The Magician's Chamber by Moon- An Hour with the Sun. 

LIGHT. An Evening with the Stars. 

Magic Glasses and How to Use Them. Little Beings from a Miniature 
Fairy Rings and How They are Made. Ocean. 

The Life-History of Lichens and The Dartmoor Ponies. 

Mosses. The Magician's Dream of Ancient 

The Hi.story of a Lava-Stream. Days. 

T IFF AND HER CHILDREN : Glimpses of Ani- 
■^— ' mal Life from the Amceba to the Insects. With over 100 Illus- 
trations. Cloth, gilt, $1.50. 

" The work forms a charming introduction to the study of zo61ogy — the science of 
living things — which, we trust, will find its way into many hands." — Nature. 

TjnNNERS IN LLFE'S RACE ; or, The Great 

^ ^ Backboned Family. With numerous Illustrations. Cloth, gilt, 

$1.50. 

"We can conceive no better gift-book than this vohime. Miss Buckley has spared 
no pains to incorporate in her book the latest results of scientific research. The illus- 
trations in the book deserve the highest praise — they are numerous, accurate, and 
Striking. ' ' — Spectator. 

yj SHORT HISTORY OF NATURAL SCL- 
-^^ ENCE ; and of the Progress of Discovery from the Time of 
the Greeks to the Present Time. New edition, revised and re- 
arranged. With 77 Illustrations. Cloth, $2.00. 
"The work, though mainly intended for children and young persons, may be most 
advantageously read by many persons of riper age, and may serve to implant in their 
minds a fuller and clearer conception of ' the promises, the achievements, and claims of 
science.' " — Journal of Science. 

ORAL TEACHINGS OF SCIENCE. Cloth, 

75 cents. 

" The book is intended for readers who would not take up an elaborate philo- 
sophical work — those who, feeling puzzled and adrift in the present chans of opmion, 
may welcome even a partial solution, from a scientific point of view, of the difficulties 
which oppress their minds." — Frotn the Preface. 

New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



M 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

CAMP-FIRES OF A NATURALIST. From the 
Field Notes of Lewis Lindsay Dyche, A. M., M. S., Professor 
of Zoology and Curator of Birds and Mammals in the Kansas 
State University. The Story of Fourteen Expeditions after 
North American Mammals. By Clarence E. Edwords. 
With numerous Illustrations. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

" It is not always that a professor of zoology is so enthusiastic a sportsman as Prof. 
Dyche. His huntinj; exploits are as varied as those of Gordon Gumming, for example, 
ill South Africa. His grizzly bear is as dangerous as the lion, and his mountain sheep 
and goats more difficult to stalk and shoot than any creatures of the torrid zone. Evi- 
dently he came by his tastes as a hunter from liielong experience." — New York 
Tribune. 

" The book has no dull pages, and is often excitingly interesting, and fully in- 
structive as to the habits, haunts, and nature of wild beasts." — Chicago hiter-Ocean. 

"There is abundance of interesting incident in addition to the scientific element, 
and the illustrations are numerous and highly graphic as to the big game met by the 
hunters, and the hardships cheerfully undertaken." — Brooklyn Eagle. 

"The narrative is simple and manly and full of the freedom of forests. . . . This 
record of his work ought to awaken the interest of the generation growing up, if only 
by the contrast of his active e.xperience of the resources of Nature and of savage life 
with the background of culture and the environment of educational advantages that 
are being rapidly formed for the students of the United States. Prof. Dyche seems, 
from this account of him, to have thought no personal hardship or exertion wasted in 
his attempt to collect facts, that the naturalist of the future may be provided with com- 
plete and verified ideas as to species which will soon be extinct. This is good work — 
work that we need and that posterity will recognize with gratitude. The illustrations 
of the book are interesting, and the type is clear." — New York Times. 

" The adventures are simply told, but some of them are thrilling of necessity, how- 
ever modestly the narrator does his work. Prof. Dyche has had about as many expe- 
riences in the way of hunting for science as fail to the lot of the most fortunate, and 
this recountal of them is most interesting. The camps from which he worked ranged 
from the Lake of the Woods to Arizona, and northwest to British Columbia, and in 
every region he was successful in securing rare specimens for his museum." — Chicago 
Times. 

" The literary construction is refreshing. The reader is carried into the midst of 
the very scenes of which the author tells, not by elaborateness of description but by the 
directness and vividness of every sentence. He is given no opportunity to abandon 
the companions with which the book has provided him, for incident is made to follow 
incident with no intervening literary padding. In fact, the book is all aclioD."— Kansas 
City Journal. 

" As an outdoor book of camping and hunting this book possesses a timely 
interest, but it also has the merit of scientific exactness in the descriptions of the 
habits, peculiarities, and haunts of wild animals." — Philadelphia Press. 

" But what is most important of all in a narrative of this kind— for it seems to us 
that 'Camp-Fires of a Naturalist' was written first of all for entertainment — these 
notes iieither have been ' dressed up ' and their accuracy thereby impaired, nor yet re- 
tailed in a dry and statistical manner. The book, in a word, is a plain narrative of 
adventures among the larger American animals." — Philadelphia Bulletin. 

" We recommend it most heartily to old and young alike, and suggest it as a beauti- 
ful souvenir volume for those who have seen the wonderful display of mounted animals 
at the World's Y^\i."—Topeka Capital. 



New York : D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 



HAND-BOOKS OF SOCIAL USAGES. 

(TOCIAL ETIQUETTE OF NEW YORK. Re- 

V— ^ written and enlarged. i8mo. Cloth, gilt, $i.oo. 

Special pains have been taken to make this work represent accurately 
existing customs in New York society. The subjects treated are of visiting 
and visiting-cards, giving and attending balls, receptions, dinners, etc., 
debuts, chaperons, weddings, opera and theatre parties, costumes and cus- 
toms, addresses and signatures, and funeral customs, covering so far as 
practicable all social usages. 

ON'T ; or, Directions for avoiding Improprieties in 
Conduct and Common Errors of Speech. By Censor. Parch- 
ment-Paper Edition, square i8mo, 30 cents. Vest-Pocket Edi- 
tion, cloth, flexible, gilt edges, red lines, 30 cents. Boudoir 
Edition (with a new chapter designed for young people), cloth, 
gilt, 30 cents. 130th thousand. 

"Don't" deals with manners at the table, in the drawing-room, and in 
public, with taste in dress, with personal habits, with common mistakes in 
various situations in life, and with ordinary errors of speech. 



D 



IV\ 



'HAT TO DO. A Companion to "Don't." By 

Mrs. Oliver Bell Bunce. Small i8mo, cloth, gilt, uniform 

with Boudoir Edition of " Don't," 30 cents. 

A dainty little book, containing helpful and practical explanations of 
social usages and rules. It tells the reader how to entertain and how to be 
entertained, and sets forth the etiquette of engagements and marriages, in- 
troductions and calls. 



G 



American, resident in the United Kingdom, i2mo. Cloth, 
$1.50. 

"The raison d'etre of this book is to provide Americans — and especially those 
visiting England — with a concise, comprehensive, and comprehensible hand-book 
which will give them all necessary information respecting 'how things are' in Eng- 
land. While it deals with subjects connected with all ranks and classes, it is particularly 
intended to be an exhibit and explanation of the ways, habits, customs, and usages of 
what is known in England as 'high life." " — From the Pre/ace. 

TNTS ABOUT MEN'S DRESS: Right Prin- 
ciples Economically Applied. By a New York Clubman. 
i8mo. Parchment-paper, 30 cents. 

A useful manual, especially for young men desirous of dressing eco- 
nomically and yet according to the canons of good taste. 



H 



New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



T 



D. APPLETON & CO.'S PUBLICATIONS. 

VALUABLE HANDBOOKS. 

'HE VERBALIST, a Manual devoted to Brief Discus- 
sions of the Right and the Wrong Use of Words, and to some 
other Matters of Interest to those who would Speak and Write 
with Propriety, By Alfred Ayres. i8mo. Cloth, $i.oOi 



r^HE ORTHOEPIST. a Pronouncing Manual, contain- 
■* ing about Four Thousand Five Hundred Words, including a 
considerable Number of the Names of Foreign Authors, Art- 
ists, etc., that are often Mispronounced. By Alfred Ayres. 
Revised and enlarged edition. i8mo. Cloth, $1.25. 

rnJIE RHYMESTER J or the Rules of Rhyme. A 

■*■ Guide to English Versification. With a Dictionary of Rhymes, 

an Examination of Classical Measures, and Comments upon 

Burlesque, Comic Verse, and Song-Writing. By the late Tom 

Hood. Edited by Arthur Penn. i8mo. Cloth, $1.00. 

n-^HE CORRESPONDENT. By James Wood David- 
-• SON. Small i2mo. Cloth, 60 cents. Information, with forms 
of address, salutation, etc, 

pRRORS IN THE USE OF ENGLISH. By the 
J—^ late William B. Hodgson, LL. D., Professor of Political 

Economy in the University of Edinburgh. American revised 

edition. i2mo. Cloth, $1.50. 

^LTPS OF TONGUE AND PEN. ByJ. H.Long, 
»^ M. A., Principal of Collegiate Institute, Peterborough, Ontario. 
l2mo. Cloth, 60 cents. 



T 



HE ART OF AUTHORSHLP. Literary Reminis. 
cences, Methods of Work, and Advice to Young Beginners, 
Opinions of many Leading Authors of the Day. Compiled 
and edited by George Bainton, i2mo. Cloth, untrimmed 
edges, $1.25. 



New York: D. APPLETON & CO., i, 3, & 5 Bond Street. 



APPLETONS' LIBRARY LISTS. 



Libraries, whether for the school, home, or the public at large, are 
among the mo.st important and wide- reaching educational factors in the 
advancement of cisilization. Modern intellectual activity, keeping pace 
with modern invention, has added to the earlier stores ot literature myriads 
of books, and a still greater mass of reading matter in other forms. Unfor- 
tunately, much of the material put into print is not of an educational or 
elevating character. It is important, then, in the selection of books for 
public use, especially for the young, that great care be exercised to secure 
only such kinds of reading as will be wholesome, instructive, and intrinsic- 
ally valuable. 

For more than fifty years Messrs. D. Appleton & Co. have been en- 
gaged in the publication of the choicest productions from the pens of dis- 
tinguished authors of the past and present, of both Europe and America, 
and their catalogue of books now comprises several thousand volumes, em- 
bracing every department of knowledjje. Classified lists of these publica- 
tions have been prepared, affording facilities for a judicious selection of 
books covering the whole ran^e of Literature, Science, and Art, for 
individual bookbuyers or for a thorough equipment of any library. 

Lists A, B, and C are of books selected especially for School Libraries. 

Zist A. — For Primary and Litermediate Grades. 

List B. — For Grammar and High School Grades. 

List C. — For College and University Libraries, 

The other lists are of books grouped according to subjects, and include 
the above. 

The classifications are as follows : 

List D.— History. List O.— Language, Literature, and 
" E. — BiOQRAPer. Art. 

" P.— Physical Science. " P. — Reference Books. 

" G.— Mental AND Moral Science. " Q. — Poetry and Essay. 

" H.— Political and Social Sci- " R.— Travel and Adventure. 

ENCE. " S.— Pedagogy and Education. 

" I. — Finance and Economics. " T. — Fiction. 

" K.— Hygiene and Sanitary Sci- " U.— Amusement and Rechea- 

ENCE. TION. 

" L.— Philosophy and Metaphysics. " V.— Evolution. 
" M.— Technology and Indus- " W.— Religion. 

trial Arts. " X.— Law. 

" N.— Anthropology, Ethnology, " Y. — Medicine. 

Archeology, Pal^eontol- " Z. — Juvenile Books. 

OGY. 

AA.— Unclassified. BB.— School and College Text-Books. 

CO.— Spanish Publications. 

We respectfully invito the attention of public and private book-buyers 
everywhere to these lists, confident that they will be found of interest 
and profit. Single lists mailed free. Complete set, 18 cents to cover 
postage. 

D. APPLETON & CO., Publishers, 

New York, Boston, Chicago. 



Cj 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



019 820 922 3 



nnn,^,^.'!^'^^ °^ CONGRESS 



019 820 922 3 



